THE  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 

THREE  INTRODUCTORY  LECTURES  ON  THE  SCIENCE  OF 
THOUGHT.  With  a  correspondence  on  ' '  Thought 
Without  Words,"  between  F.  Max  Muller  and 
Francis  Galton,  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  George  J.  Ro- 
manes, and  others.  Pages,  128.  Cloth,  75  cents; 
paper,  25  cents. 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 

324  DEARBORN  ST.,   CHICAGO. 


THREE  LECTURES 


SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE 


DELIVERED  AT  THE 


OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  EXTENSION  MEETING 


WITH  A  SUPPLEMENT 


MY  PREDECESSORS 


F.  MAX  MULLER 


SECOND  EDITION 


CHICAGO 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
1895 


/- 


2004730 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

First  Lecture.— Man  and  Animal.— No  Mystery  in  Language.  i 
Second  Lecture. — The  Analysis  of  Language. — The  Lesson 

Taught  by  the  Science  of  Language 25 

Third  Lecture.— Thought  Thicker  than  Blood.— The  Cradle 

of  the  Aryas 43 

My  Predecessors •  •  •  73 


FIRST  LECTURE. 


MAN  AND  ANIMAL. 


seems  to  be  some  truth  after  all  in  the  old 
.I.  English  saying  that  familiarity  breeds  contempt, 
or,  at  all  events,  indifference. 

There  is  nothing  we  are  more  familiar  with  than 
our  own  language.  We  learn  it,  we  hardly  know  how. 
While  reading,  writing,  arithmetic,  and  all  the  rest, 
are  not  acquired  without  considerable  effort,  and  are 
often  forgotten  again  in  later  life,  we  learn  our  most 
difficult  lesson,  namely,  speaking,  without  any  con- 
scious effort,  and,  however  old  we  may  grow,  we  never 
forget  it  again. 

But  I  ask  you,  Have  you  ever  tried  to  find  out  what 
this  language  of  ours  really  is;  how  it  came  to  us; 
when  and  where  it  was  made ;  and  what  it  was  made  of  ? 

Of  course,  you  will  all  say,  we  learnt  our  language 
from  our  father  and  mother  or  rather  from  our  mother 
and  father.  Yes,  but  from  whom  did  they  learn  it? 
From  their  parents,  and  these  parents  again  from 
their  parents,  and  thus  ad  infinitum. 

Even  this  simple  answer,  which  is  by  no  means 
quite  correct,  is  full  of  import,  and  ought  to  have  been 
taken  to  heart  far  more  seriously  than  it  seems  to  have 


2  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

been  by  certain  philosophers  who  maintain  that  parrots 
and  other  animals  also  learn  to  speak,  exactly  as  chil- 
dren learn  to  speak,  and  that  therefore  language  is 
after  all  nothing  so  very  wonderful,  and  cannot  be  said 
to  form  an  impassable  barrier  between  man  and  beast. 
It  is  quite  true  that  children  now-a-days  do  neither 
create  their  own  language  nor  inherit  it.  Speaking 
any  given  language  is  not  an  acquired  habit  that  de- 
scends from  father  to  son.  The  necessary  conditions 
of  speech,  however,  exist  in  man  and  in  man  only; 
for  if  these  necessary  conditions  were  present  in  the 
parrot  as  well  as  in  man,  it  would  indeed  be  strange, 
to  say  no  more,  that  there  should  never  have  been  a 
Parrotese  language,  and  that  no  parrot  should  ever 
have  learnt  his  language  from  his  parents,  and  they 
from  theirs,  and  thus  ad  infinitum.  A  parrot  never 
learns  to  speak,  as  little  as  a  child  would  ever  learn  to 
fly.  These  facts  are  so  simple  and  so  obvious  that  it 
is  difficult  to  understand,  how  they  can  ever  have  been 
disregarded  by  philosophers.  And  yet  to  the  present 
day,  most  thoughtful  writers  go  on  repeating  the  old 
fallacy,  that  a  parrot  learns  to  say  "poor  Polly,"  just 
as  a  child  learns  to  say  "poor  Polly." 

To  put  it  on  the  lowest  ground,  do  these  philoso- 
phers not  see  that  every  child  of  man  is  the  descend- 
ant of  an  animal  that  could  frame  language,  and  has 
framed  language ;  while  every  parrot,  and  every  other 
animal  is  the  descendant  of  an  animal  that  never 
framed  a  language  of  its  own?  When  a  parrot  learns 
to  speak,  it  is  simply  tempted  to  utter  certain  sounds, 
in  more  or  less  close  imitation  of  English  or  French, 
by  such  rewards  as  sugar  and  other  sweetmeats,  or  by 
severe  punishments  on  the  part  of  its  keepers.  As  to 
any  parrot  inventing  a  language  of  its  own,  and  teach- 


FIRST  LECTURE.  3 

ing  that  language  to  its  young,  not  even  Mr.  Romanes 
would  believe  in  such  a  miracle. 

It  is  therefore  not  enough  to  say  that  we  learn  our 
language  from  our  parents,  and  they  from  their  par- 
ents, and  thus  ad  infinitum.  That  would  be  a  very 
lazy  way  of  handling  our  problem.  This  retrogression 
ad  infinitum  would  be  a  mere  confession  of  ignorance, 
and  such  a  confession,  though  it  is  very  honorable 
when  we  know  that  we  cannot  know,  cannot  be  tol- 
erated except  in  cases  where  we  know  also  why  we  can- 
not know.  , 

When  we  see  the  history,  or,  as  it  is  now  the 
fashion  to  call  it,  the  evolution  of  language,  we  can- 
not help  admitting  that  there  must  have  been  some 
kind  of  beginning.  A  language,  such  as  English,  for 
instance,  does  not  tumble  down  from  the  sky;  and, 
even  if  it  did,  it  would  have  to  be  picked  up,  and  to 
pick  up  a  language,  as  you  know,  is  not  a  very  easy 
task,  particularly  for  a  person  supposed  to  be  dumb 
and  without  any  idea  of  what  language  is  meant  for.  In 
former  times,  as  it  seemed  to  be  impossible  to  account 
for  language  as  a  piece  of  human  workmanship,  it  was 
readily  admitted  that  it  was  of  divine  workmanship, 
that  it  really  had  tumbled  down  from  the  sky  in  some 
way  or  other,  and  that,  curiously  enough,  man  alone 
of  all  animals  then  living  upon  earth  had  been  able  to 
pick  it  up. 

But  when  languages  began  to  be  more  carefully 
examined,  traces  of  human  workmanship  became 
more  and  more  visible,  and  at  last  the  question  could 
no  longer  be  pushed  aside,  how  language  was  made, 
and  why  man  alone  of  all  living  beings  should  have 
come  into  possession  of  it. 

Now  I  ask,  If  language  is  that  which,  as  a  matter 


4  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

of  fact,  distinguishes  man  from  all  other  animals,  is  it 
not  disgraceful  that  we  should  be  so  careless  as  not  to 
attempt  to  find  out  what  language  is,  and  why  we,  and 
we  alone  of  all  animals,  enjoy  the  privilege  of  speech  ? 
I  know  quite  well  that  attempts  have  been  made  again 
and  again  to  show  that  language  is  not  the  distinguish- 
ing characteristic  of  man,  and  that  animals  also,  though 
they  have  never  yet  spoken,  possess  the  faculty  of 
speech,  and  may  in  time  begin  to  speak.  Even  Kant 
seems  to  have  indulged  in  the  hope  that  the  chimpan- 
zee might  some  day  begin  to  speak.  But  if  faculty 
means  originally  facility,  or  that  which  enables  us  to 
do  a  thing,  surely  it  is  not  too  much  to  ask,  why  hith- 
erto no  animal  should  ever  have  cultivated  that  gift; 
why  no  animal  should  ever  have  said,  "I  am  an  ani- 
mal," or,  "  I  am  an  ape."  Mr.  Romanes,  in  his  recent 
work  on  Mental  Evolution  in  Man,  has  done  his  very 
best  to  throw  a  bridge  over  the  gulf  that  separates  all 
animals  from  man,  namely,  language  ;  and  if  he  has 
failed  in  showing  how  human  language  could  have 
arisen  from  animal  utterances,  I  doubt  whether  any- 
body else  will  ever  lead  that  forlorn  hope  again. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  show  that  animals  communi- 
cate ;  but  this  is  a  fact  which  has  never  been  doubted. 
Dogs  who  growl  and  bark  leave  no  doubt  in  the  mind 
of  other  dogs,  or  cats,  or  even  of  man,  of  what  they 
mean.  But  growling  and  barking  are  not  language, 
nor  do  they  even  contain  the  elements  of  language. 
All  names  are  concepts,  and  to  say  that  we  think  in 
concepts  is  only  another  way  of  saying  that  we  think 
in  class-names.  Mr.  Romanes  admits  this  fully;  in 
fact,  the  very  words  I  have  used  are  his  own  words 
(loc.  cit.,  p.  22,  note).  But  has  he  been  able  to  discover 
any  traces  or  germs  of  language,  or  what  he  calls  "in- 


FIRST  LECTURE.  5 

tellectual  symbolism,"  in  any  animal  known  to  us,  and 
more  particularly  in  that  animal  from  which  he  thinks 
we  are  more  immediately  descended  ?  Evidently  not. 
"Anthropoid  apes,"  he  says  (p.  364),  "are  the  most 
intelligent,  and,  therefore,  if  specially  trained,  would 
probably  display  greater  aptitude  in  the  matter  of 
sign-making  than  is  to  be  met  with  in  any  other  kind 
of  brute."  "But,"  he  continues,  "I  do  not  press  this 
point.  What  I  now  refer  to  is  the  fact,  that  the 
existing  species  of  anthropoid  apes  are  very  few  in 
number,  and  appear  to  be  all  on  the  high  road  to 
extinction.  Moreover,  it  is  certain  that  none  of  these 
existing  species  can  have  been  the  progenitor  of  man, 
and,  lastly,  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  extinct  species 
(or  genus)  which  did  give  origin  to  man  must  have 
differed  in  several  important  respects  from  any  of  its 
existing  allies.  In  the  first  place,  it  must  have  been 
more  social  in  habits ;  and,  in  the  next  place,  it  was 
probably  more  vociferous  than  the  orang,  the  gorilla, 
or  the  chimpanzee." 

Against  such  arguments  it  seems  to  me  that  even 
the  gods  would  fight  in  vain.  We  are  told,  that  man 
is  descended  from  some  kind  of  anthropoid  ape.  We 
answer  that  all  anthropoid  apes,  known  to  us,  are 
neither  social  nor  vociferous.  And  we  are  told  that 
in  that  case  man  must  be  derived  from  an  extinct  ape 
who  differed  from  all  known  apes,  and  was  both  social 
and  vociferous.  Surely,  if  this  is  a  scientific  argu- 
ment, scientific  arguments  would  in  future  rank  very 
low  indeed. 

I  know  of  no  book  which  has  proved  more  clearly 
that  language  forms  an  impassable  barrier  between 
man  and  beast  than  the  book  lately  published  by  Mr. 
Romanes  on  the  Origin  of  Human  Faculty,  though 


6  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

his  object  was  the  very  opposite.  Taking  that  point 
therefore  for  granted,  it  seems  to  me  disgraceful  that 
in  our  general  system  of  education,  and  even  of 
elementary  education,  no  place  should  have  been 
found  as  yet  for  the  Science  of  Language,  and  that  a 
single  child  should  be  allowed  to  grow  up,  without 
knowing  the  worth  and  value  of  his  most  precious 
inheritance,  without  knowing  what  language  is  ;  lan- 
guage, which  alone  distinguishes  him  from  all  other 
animals  ;  language,  which  alone  makes  man  man  ;  lan- 
guage, which  has  made  him  the  lord  of  nature,  and  has 
restored  to  him  the  consciousness  of  his  own  true  Self. 
And  here  I  must  guard  at  once  against  an  outcry 
that  is  sure  to  be  raised.  It  will  be  said  that  all 
these  arguments  are  inspired  by  an  ill-disguised  pride, 
and  arise  from  a  wish  to  claim  a  higher  position  for 
man  than  for  other  animals.  We  are  told  that  we 
ought  to  be  more  humble,  and  love  our  neighbors 
and  venerate  our  ancestors,  even  though  they  were 
hairy  apes.  I  plead  "Not  guilty"  to  all  such  charges. 
By  suggesting  motives,  any  discussion  may  be  poi- 
soned, but  such  suggestions  have  really  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  the  question  which  we  are  discussing. 
If  it  could  be  proved  by  irrefragable  evidence  that 
only  a  hundred  years  back  all  our  ancestors  were 
hairy  and  speechless,  that  would  not  make  the  slight- 
est difference  in  our  argument.  On  the  contrary,  it 
would  only  enhance  our  admiration  of  language, 
which,  whether  in  one  or  in  a  hundred  centuries,  could 
have  wrought  such  a  marvellous  charge.  It  would 
only  make  it  more  incumbent  on  us  to  find  out  what 
language  really  is,  that  it  should  have  produced,  not 
only  a  new  species  of  animal,  the  homo  sapiens,  but  an 
entirely  new  world.  That  language  has  raised  man 


FIRST  LECTURE.  7 

into  an  entirely  new  atmosphere,  an  intellectual  at- 
mosphere which  no  other  animal  is  able  to  breathe,  is 
admitted  on  all  sides. 

Is  it  not  disgraceful,  then,  I  ask  once  more — is  it 
not  disgraceful  that  we  should  pass  through  life  with- 
out attempting  to  know  what  that  atmosphere  really  is 
from  which  we  draw  our  best  intellectual  life?  No 
one  is  considered  educated  without  a  knowledge  of 
writing,  reading,  and  arithmetic.  To  me  it  seems  that 
no  one  should  call  himself  educated  who  does  not 
know  what  language  is,  and  how  it  came  to  be  what 
it  is. 

At  first  sight  all  we  seem  to  be  able  to  say  of  lan- 
guage is  that  it  is  wonderful,  that  it  passes  all  under- 
standing, or,  as  some  people  would  say,  that  it  is 
something  supernatural  and  miraculous.  That  cer- 
tain vibrations  of  air  which  we  produce  by  various 
emissions  of  our  breath  should  represent  to  us  and  to 
others  all  that  has  ever  passed  through  our  mind,  all 
we  have  ever  seen  or  heard  or  felt,  all  that  passes  be- 
fore us  in  the  countless  works  of  nature,  and  all  that 
passes  within  us  in  our  own  endless  feelings,  our  imag- 
inings, and  our  thoughts,  is  marvellous  indeed.  In  fact, 
next  to  the  great  miracle  of  existence,  there  is  no  greater 
miracle  than  this  translation  of  all  existence  into  hu- 
man speech  and  human  thought. 

But,  as  with  all  true  miracles,  so  with  this,  our  first 
duty  is  to  try  to  interpret  it,  because  then  only  will  it 
reveal  to  us  all  that  it  was  meant  to  reveal.  And  with 
regard  to  the  miracle  wrought  by  language,  nothing  is 
really  more  miraculous  than  its  simplicity.  It  is  gen- 
erally supposed  that  the  philosophy  of  language  is  a 
subject  far  beyond  the  reach  of  ordinary  minds.  I 
should  be  sorry  to  suppose  that  there  were  any  minds 


8  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

which  could  not  take  in  the  simple  lessons  of  the 
Science  of  Language.  We  never  know  anything  truly, 
unless  we  can  make  it  as  clear  as  daylight  to  the  com- 
monest understanding.  Every  one  of  us  starts  from 
the  level  of  the  ordinary  understanding,  and  however 
far  he  may  advance,  unless  he  has  lost  the  thread  of 
his  own  knowledge,  that  is,  unless  he  has  allowed  his 
own  mind  to  get  ravelled,  tangled,  and  knotted,  he 
ought  to  be  able  to  lead  others  step  by  step  to  the 
same  eminence  which  he  has  reached  himself. 

In  no  science  is  this  more  easy  than  in  the  Science 
of  Language.  It  is  difficult  to  teach  a  man  music 
who  cannot  play  a  single  instrument.  But  we  all  play 
at  least  one  language,  and  can  test  the  teachings  of 
the  Science  of  Language  by  a  reference  to  our  own 
language. 

I  shall  try  therefore  to  show  you  what  the  Science 
of  Language  has  achieved,  by  taking  my  illustrations 
chiefly  from  a  language  which  you  all  know — from 
English.  And  though  I  cannot  in  a  few  lectures  attempt 
to  give  you  more  than  the  A  B  C  of  our  science,  still 
even  that  ABC  may  be  useful,  and  may  possibly  en- 
courage some  of  you  to  pay  more  attention  to  the  study 
of  so  familiar,  and  yet  so  little  explored  a  subject  as 
our  language  is.  It  has  indeed  many  lessons  to  teach 
us,  many  mysteries  to  reveal  to  us,  and  there  is  in  it 
more  work  to  do  for  any  one  who  wishes  to  do  useful 
work,  than  in  any  other  science  which  I  know  of. 

When  we  are  told  that  the  English  language  con- 
sists of  about  250,000  words,  we  are  no  doubt  stag- 
gered, and  do  not  know  how  such  a  number  of  signs 
could  have  arisen,  and  how  they  can  all  be  kept  in  our 
memory,  each  in  its  own  place.  But  this  large  number 
of  words  is  really  an  accumulation  of  many  centuries, 


FIRST  LECTURE.  9 

and  nothing  like  that  number  could  have  been  kept 
alive,  except  through  the  influence  of  literature. 

Now  literature,  or,  at  least,  a  written  literature,  is 
a  mere  accident.  Let  us  try,  therefore,  to  realise  what 
a  language  would  be  which  possesses  as  yet  no  litera- 
ture, and,  therefore,  no  literary  standard.  Such  lan- 
guages still  exist,  and  we  find  them  generally  full  of 
dialectic  variety.  They  vary  as  spoken  colloquially  in 
each  family  ;  they  vary  still  more  as  spoken  in  different 
clans  and  colonies.  In  both  these  forms,  as  colloquial 
and  as  dialectic,  they  are  full  of  what  we  may  call 
slang, — expressions  started  by  the  whims  of  individ- 
uals, but  often  retained,  and  admitted  after  a  time  into 
more  general  use. 

The  first  beginning  of  a  settled  form  of  speech  is 
made  at  public  gatherings,  where  a  language  must  be 
used  that  is  intelligible  to  persons  belonging  to  different 
families  and  coming  from  distant  settlements.  This 
public  language,  which  is  soon  adopted  for  sacred 
poetry  also,  for  popular  legends,  and  for  legal  enact- 
ments, becomes  in  time  what  is  called  the  sacred,  the 
literary,  or  the  classical  dialect.  But  it  does  not  ab- 
sorb the  whole  life  of  a  language.  On  the  contrary, 
«ach  language  runs  on  in  its  natural  channels  of  col- 
loquial speech  and  dialect  and  slang,  and  supplies  from 
time  to  time  new  material  to  the  classical  dialect. 

What  thus  takes  place  before  our  very  eyes  in 
illiterate  languages,  must  have  taken  place  in  all  lan- 
guages, and  we  can  see  the  same  forces  at  work,  even 
now,  in  such  highly  cultivated  literary  forms  of  speech 
as  English. 

There  is  one  kind  of  English  which  is  spoken  in 
parliament,  in  the  pulpit,  and  in  the  courts  of  law, 


10  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

which  may  be  called  the  public,  the  ordinary,  and  rec- 
ognised Knglish. 

The  colloquial  English,  as  used  by  educated  people, 
differs  but  slightly  from  this  parliamentary  English, 
though  it  admits  greater  freedom  of  construction,  and 
a  more  familiar  phraseology. 

The  literary  English  again  requires  still  greater 
grammatical  accuracy,  and  admits  a  number  of  uncom- 
mon, poetical,  and  even  antiquated  expressions  which 
would  sound  strange  in  ordinary  conversation. 

The  dialectic  English  is  by  no  means  extinct.  The 
peasants  in  every  part  of  England  and  Scotland  and 
Ireland,  though  they  understand  a  sermon  in  church, 
and  read  their  newspaper,  both  of  which  are  written 
in  literary  English,  continue  to  speak  their  own  lan- 
guage among  themselves, — a  language  full  of  ancient 
and  curious  expressions  which  often  throw  much  light 
on  the  history  of  classical  English.  These  dialects 
have  of  late  been  most  carefully  collected,  and  this  is 
a  branch  of  study  in  which  everybody,  if  only  he  has 
a  well-trained  ear,  is  able  to  render  most  valuable  as- 
sistance. 

Lastly,  in  discussing  special  subjects,  we  are  driven 
to  use  a  large  number  of  technical,  scientific,  foreign, 
and  even  slang  expressions,  many  of  which  are  quite 
unintelligible  to  the  ordinary  speaker. 

It  is  these  technical,  scientific,  foreign,  and  slang 
terms  which  swell  our  dictionaries  to  such  an  enor- 
mous size.  We  are  told  that  the  new  Oxford  Dic- 
tionary will  contain  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  words. 
Does  any  one  of  us  know  250,000  English  words?  I 
doubt  it.  It  is  extraordinary  how  many  words  this 
small  brain  of  ours  will  hold,  but  there  are  limits  to 
everything.  In  China  a  young  man  receives  his  first 


FIRST  LECTURE.  II 

or  second  class  in  examination,  according  to  the  num- 
ber of  words  he  can  read  and  write.  But  in  order  to 
obtain  the  place  of  an  imperial  historian,  a  candidate 
is  not  required  to  know  more  than  9,000.  We  do  more 
than  this.  Most  of  us  can  read  Shakespeare's  plays, 
and  in  order  to  do  that,  we  must  know  about  15,000 
words.  But  though  we  understand  most  of  these  words 
(there  are  only  about  500  to  600  words  in  Shakespeare 
which  may  justly  be  called  obsolete),  there  are  many 
we  should  never  think  of  using  ourselves.  Most  of  us, 
I  believe,  never  use  more  than  3,000  or  4,000  words, 
and  we  are  assured  that  there  are  peasants  who  never 
use  more  than  300  or  400.  This  does  not  mean  that 
they  would  not  understand  more  than  that  number, 
for  the  Bible  which  they  hear  in  church  contains  about 
6,000  words;1  these  they  would  understand  more  or 
less  accurately,  though  they  would  never  think  of  using 
them. 


NO  MYSTERY  IN  LANGUAGE. 

A  language,  therefore,  is  after  all  not  so  bewilder- 
ing a  thing  as  it  seems  to  be,  when  we  hear  of  a  dic- 
tionary of  250,000  words.  In  fact,  for  all  the  ordinary 
purposes  of  life  a  dictionary  of  4,000  words  would  be 
quite  sufficient* 

Skeat's  Etymological  Dictionary  of  the  English  Lan- 
guage, which  confines  itself  to  primary  words, — that 
is  to  say,  which  would  explain  luck,  but  not  lucky, 
unlucky,  luckless, — deals  with  no  more  than  13,500  en- 
tries. Of  these  only  4,000  are  of  Teutonic  origin  ;  5,000 

lAccording  to  W.  T.  Adey,  The  English  of  King  Jatttes's  Version,  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  contain  6,ootf  Words. 


12  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

are  taken  from  French;  2,700  direct  from  Latin,  400 
from  Greek,  about  250  from  Celtic,  and  the  rest  from 
various  sources.  If,  therefore,  we  confine  our  atten- 
tion to  that  portion  of  English  which  is  Teutonic,  we 
find  that  English  proper  consists  of  about  4,000  inde- 
pendent words,  and  that  all  the  rest  are  derived  from 
these. 

Let  us  now  examine  some  of  the  words  which  swell 
our  dictionaries  to  such  an  enormous  extent,  in  order 
to  see  whether  they  really  belong  to  the  living  lan- 
guage, and  whether  we  ourselves  should  be  able  to 
understand  them. 

And  first  of  all  a  few  antiquated  words — words  which 
were  used  some  centuries  ago,  but  are  now  to  be  found 
in  the  dictionary  only. 

Do  you  understand  anred  and  anredness  ?  Anred 
means  single-minded.  It  is  derived  from  red  (rad}, 
purpose,  plan,  scheme,  and,  like  an/aid,  German  ein- 
faltig,  meant  originally  not-planning,  not-scheming. 
Hence  anredness  came  to  mean  singleness,  and  in  the 
thirteenth  century  people  spoke  of  the  onrednesse  of 
luve  and  onnesse  of  heorte. 

You  might  guess  the  meaning  of  avenant  when  you 
read  in  Caxton's  'Myrr.,  -I.  xiv.  45,  "A  lytil  man  is  ofte 
wet  madt  and  avenaunt, "  i.  e.  ia  little  man  Is  often  well- 
•made  arid  becoming  or  comely.  'Avenant  \§  derived 
from  avenir,  to  come,  to  become,  and  meant  agreeable, 
becoming,  handsome  ;  but  no  one  would  use  that  word 
now. 

If  you  saw  two  men  fighting,  and  one  of  them  were 
called  a  regular  bangster,  you  might  probably  guess 
what  was  meant ;  but,  though  Walter  Scott  still  uses 
.the  word  in  The  Abbot,  it  is  no  longer  a  living  word. 
There  was  an  old  legal  expression  to  commit  a  burg- 


FIRST  LECTURE.  13 

lary  "  by  bangstrie  and  force."  This  again  would  hardly 
be  intelligible,  except  to  the  historical  student  of  law. 

There  are  other  words  which  survive,  but  the  orig- 
inal meaning  of  which  has  become  antiquated.  In  the 
legal  phrase,  "  by  assault  and  battery,"  for  instance, 
battery  still  retains  its  original  meaning,  namely,  beat- 
ing or  striking.  But  we  could  no  longer  say,  to  give 
a  boy  a  battery  ;  we  must  say  a  flogging.  In  ordi- 
nary parlance  battery  now  only  means  a  number  of 
artillery,  while  men  of  science  speak  also  of  an  elec- 
tric battery. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  in  how  many  words  the 
meaning  deteriorates,  while  it  very  seldom  improves. 

A  knave  was  originally  a  young  man,  in  German 
cin  Knabe.  In  the  Court  cards  the  knave  is  simply 
the  page  or  the  knight,  but  by  no  means  the  villain. 
Villain  itself  was  originally  simply  the  inhabitant  of,  a 
village.  A  pleader  once  made  good  use  of  his  etymo- 
logical knowledge.  For  this  is  what  Swift  relates  : 
"  I  remember,  at  a  trial  in  Kent,  where  Sir  George 
Rook  was  indicted  for  calling  a  gentleman  knave  and 
villain,  the  lawyer  for  the  defendent  brought  off  his 
client  by  alleging  the  words  were  not  injurious,  for 
knave,  in  the  old  and  true  signification,  imported  only 
a  servant ;  and  villain  in  Latin  is  villicus,  which  is  no 
more  than  a  man  employed  in  country  labor,  or 
rather  a  baily. " 

I  doubt  whether  in  these  days  any  Judge,  if  pos- 
sessed of  some  philological  knowledge,  would  allow 
such  a  quibble  to  pass,  or  whether  in  return  he  would 
not  ask  leave  to  call  the  lawyer  an  idiot,  for  idiot,  as  you 
know,  meant  originally  no  more  than  a  private  person, 
a  man  who  does  not  take  part  in  public  affairs  ;  and 


14  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

afterwards  only  came  to  mean  an  outsider,  an  ill- 
informed  man,  and  lastly  an  idiot. 

A  pagan  was  originally,  like  villain,  the  inhabitant 
of  a.pagus,  a  countryman.  It  came  to  mean  heathen, 
because  it  was  chiefly  in  the  country,  outside  the  town, 
that  the  worshippers  of  the  old  national  gods  were 
allowed  to  continue.  A  heathen  was  originally  a 
person  living  on  the  heath.  Heathen,  however,  is  not 
yet  a  term  of  reproach  ;  it  simply  expresses  a  difference 
of  opinion  between  ourselves  and  others.  But  we  have 
the  .same  word  under  another  disguise,  namely  as 
/widen.  At  present  hoiden  is  used  in  the  sense  of  a 
vulgar,  romping  girl.  But  in  old  authors  it  is  chiefly 
applied  to  men,  to  clowns  or  louts.  We  may  call 
Socrates  a  heathen,  but  we  could  not  call  him  a 
hoiden,  though  we  might  possibly  apply  that  name  to 
his  wife  Xanthippe. 

Sometimes  it  happens  that  the  same  word  can  be 
used  both  in  a  good  and  in  a  bad  sense.  Simplicity 
with  us  has  generally  a  good  meaning.  We  read  in 
the  Bible  of  simplicity  and  godly  sincerity.  But,  in  the 
same  Bible  the  simple  ones  are  reproved:  "How 
long,  ye  simple  ones,  will  ye  love  simplicity  ?  and 
the  scorners  delight  in  their  scorning,  and  fools  hate 
knowledge?"  (Proii.  I.  22.) 

If  at  present  we  were  to  call  a  boy  an  imp,  he 
would  possibly  be  offended.  But  in  Spenser's  time  imp 
had  still  a  very  good  sound,  and  he  allows  a  noble  lady, 
a  lady  gent,  as  he  calls  her,  to  address  Arthur,  as 
"Thou  worthy  imp"  (Faerie  Queen,  I.  9.  6).  Nor  is 
there  any  harm  in  that  word,  for  imp  meant  originally 
graft,  and  then  offspring.  To  graft  in  German  is  impfen, 
and  this  is  really  a  corruption  of  the  Greek  e^cpveiv 
to  implant. 


FIRST  LECTURE.  15 

Brat  is  now  an  offensive  term,  even  when  applied 
to  a  child.  It  is  said  to  be  a  Welsh  word,  and  to  sig- 
nify a  rag.  It  may  be  so,  but  in  that  case  it  would  be 
difficult  to  account  for  brat  having  been  used  originally 
in  a  good  sense.  This  must  have  been  so,  for  we  find 
in  ancient  sacred  poetry  such  expressions  as,  "O 
Abraham's  brats,  o  broode  of  blessed  seede. " 

To  use  the  same  word  in  such  opposite  meanings 
is  possible  only  where  there  is  an  historical  literature 
which  keeps  alive  the  modern  as  well  as  the  antiquated 
usages  of  a  language.  In  illiterate  languages,  anti- 
quated words  are  forgotten  and  vanish. 

Think  of  all  the  meanings  imbedded  in  the  word 
nice!  How  did  they  come  there?  The  word  has  a  long 
history,  and  has  had  many  ups  and  downs  in  its  pas- 
sage through  the  world.  It  was  originally  the  Latin 
nescius,  ignorant,  and  it  retained  that  meaning  in  old 
French,  and  likewise  in  old  English.  Robert  of 
Gloucester  (p.  106,  last  line)  still  uses  the  word  in  that 
sense.  "He  was  nyce,"  he  says,  "and  kowthe  no 
wisdom,"  that  is,  he  was  ignorant  and  knew  no  wis- 
dom. But  if  there  is  an  ignorance  that  is  bliss,  there 
is  also  an  ignorance,  or  unconsciousness,  or  simplicity 
that  is  charming.  Hence  an  unassuming,  ingenuous, 
artless  person  was  likewise  called  nice.  However,  even 
that  artlessness  might  after  a  time  become  artful,  or, 
at  all  events,  be  mistaken  by  others  for  artfulness. 
The  over-nice  person  might  then  seem  fastidious,  dif- 
ficult to  please,  too  dainty,  and  he  or  she  was  then 
said  to  be  too  nice  in  his  or  her  tastes. 

We  have  traced  the  principal  meanings  of  nice  from 
ignorant  to  fastidious,  as  applied  to  persons.  If  nice 
is  applied  to  things,  it  has  most  commonly  the  mean- 
ing of  charming  ;  but  as  we  speak  of  a  fastidious  and 


l6  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

difficult  person,  we  can  also  speak  of  a  difficult  matter 
as  a  nice  matter,  or  a  nice  point. 

At  last  there  remained  nice,  which  simply  expresses 
general  approval.  Everything,  in  our  days,  is  nice, 
not  to  say,  awfully  nice.  But  unless  we  possessed  a 
literature  in  which  to  study  the  history  of  words,  it 
would  be  simply  impossible  to  discover  why  nice  should 
express  approval  as  well  as  disapproval,  nay,  why  it 
should  in  the  end  become  a  mere  emphatic  expression, 
as  when  we  say,  "That  is  a  nice  business,"  or  "that 
is  a  nice  mess." 

And  here  we  approach  a  new  class  of  words  which 
swell  our  dictionaries  very  considerably,  namely,  slang- 
words.  Slang  is  more  than  a  colloquial  and  familiar 
expression,  it  always  conveys  the  idea  of  being  a  little 
vulgar.  It  is  quite  true  that  some  expressions  which 
we  call  slang  were  perfectly  correct  some  centuries  ago, 
and  that  they  have  the  right  to  claim  a  place  among 
antiquated  words.  The  Americans  are  very  clever  at 
making  out  that  most  of  their  slang  was  pure  classical 
English  some  centuries  ago.  That  may  be  so ;  in 
many  cases  it  no  doubt  is  so.  But  that  does  not  take 
away  the  peculiar  twang  of  what  has  now  become 
slang.  A  distinguished  American  politician  declared 
that  under  certain  circumstances  he  would  let  the  Con- 
stitution "slide."  That  certainly  was  slang.  But 
when  he  was  blamed  for  his  undignified  expression,  he 
appealed  to  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare,  who  use  the 
same  word  in  such  phrases  as,  "Wei  neigh  all  other 
cures  let  he  slyde";  she  "  lete  her  sorwe  slide";  "he 
lets  the  world  slide." 

It  is  often  difficult  to  say  why  certain  colloquial 
expressions  are  vulgar,  while  others  are  allowed  to 
pass.  Much  depends  on  the  speaker,  for  you  may  say 


FIRST  LECTURE.  17 

almost  anything  in  English,  if  you  know  how  to  say  it. 
There  is  no  harm  in  saying  "You  bet  ";  yet  in  America 
it  is  a  sign  of  vulgarity.  "I  am  very  dry  "  is  slang,  "  I 
am  very  thirsty "  is  quite  correct  ;  yet  thirsty  meant 
originally  dry,  and  we  may  still  speak  of  "thirsty  land," 
instead  of  dry  land.  Thirsty  is  connected  with  Latin 
torrere,  to  parch,  Greek  repffeadai,  to  become  dry. 

"I  have  been  enjoying  poor  health  "  is  certainly 
wrong,  but  I  doubt  whether  poor  or  bad  health  is  a 
solecism.  It  is  true  that  health  by  itself  means  sound- 
ness of  body,  and  is  connected  with  hale,  healing,  and 
whole  (for  hole").  But  as  we  can  speak  of  good  and  bad 
luck,  there  is  no  serious  objection  to  our  speaking  of 
good,  or  bad,  or  indifferent  health. 

The  frequent  use  of  the  verb  to  get  is  in  bad  taste, 
but  again,  it  can  hardly  be  called  wrong.  When  we 
read,  "  I  got  my  things  packed,  and  got  to  the  train  in 
time,  and  got  to  Paris,  and  got  to  the  hotel,  and  got  my 
supper,  and  got  sleepy,  and  soon  got  to  bed,  and  got  a 
good  night's  rest,"  we  can  understand  all  that  is  meant, 
but  we  feel  offended  by  the  poverty  and  vulgarity  of 
the  expression. 

Sometimes,  however,  slang  becomes  utterly  unin- 
telligible, and  requires  a  commentary  except  to  the 
initiated.  I  shall  read  a  sentence  from  a  Melbourne 
paper,  which  I  hope  few  here  present  will  understand 
without  the  help  of  explanatory  notes  : 

"Say,  mate,  some  our'n  cockneys  chummed  with 
'em  Melbourne  larrikins  'at  yon  booze-ken.  Flash 
coves,  blacklegs,  and  welchers  that  they  be,  they  lushed 
like  old  'Arry  till  on  'em  kicked  the  bucket.  They 
told  a  bobby  that  coomed  by  as  they  was  gents. 
'That's  all  my  heye  and  Betty  Martin,'  says  he — and 
he  slips  on  the  darbies  and  brought  'em  to  quod. " 


l8  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

This,  no  doubt,  is  very  vulgar  English,  but  it  is 
English  for  all  that,  and  if  there  ever  should  be  a 
violent  social  revolution  at  Melbourne,  and  the  lower 
classes  should  become  the  upper  classes,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  this  kind  of  English  might  be  spoken 
there  in  parliament  and  even  in  the  pulpit.  We  must 
not  forget  that  in  its  origin  every  language  may  be 
called  vulgar.  It  is  the  language  of  the  vulgus,  before 
it  becomes  the  language  of  literature.  Even  Dante 
calls  his  Italian  il  volgare,  and  he  was  the  first  to  use 
that  common  spoken  idiom  for  the  highest  literary 
purposes. 

There  are  slang-dictionaries,  as  large  as  the  dic- 
tionaries of  any  language,  and  I  am  sorry  to  say  that 
even  our  Universities  contribute  every  year  a  fair  share 
toward  new  and  enlarged  editions  of  these  books. 
Little  go,  Moderations,  Greats,  to  be  ploughed,  to  be 
gulphed,  are  well-known  specimens  of  this  mysterious 
language.  There  are  many  more  which  it  is  perhaps 
wiser  not  to  mention. 

As  to  technical  and  scientific  terms,  they  are  end- 
less. Try  to  speak  with  a  boot-maker  or  a  carpenter 
about  his  own  tools  and  his  own  work,  and  you  will  be 
surprised  at  the  unknown  treasures  of  the  English 
language.  Not  long  ago  a  wine-merchant  to  whom  I 
had  complained  about  some  bottles  of  wine  not  being 
quite  full,  wrote  to  me  to  return  the  ullaged  bottles. 
I  did  not  understand  ullaged,  and  I  had  to  consult  a 
dictionary.  There  I  found  that  eullage  in  ancient 
French  meant  that  which  is  required  to  fill  a  bottle, 
from  euiller,  to  fill.  This  euiller  is  supposed  to  stand 
for  olier,  to  oil.  But  why  to  oil?  Because  in  the  South 
of  France  and  Italy  to  the  present  day  oil  is  poured 
into  a  bottle,  instead  of  corking  it.  That  oil  has  to  be 


FIRST  LECTURE.  1 9 

dashed  out  before  the  wine  is  drunk,  and  a  certain 
amount  of  wine  is  lost  in  that  process.  That  is  the 
eullage,  and  hence  the  ullaged  bottle.  I  doubt  whether 
my  wine-merchant  knew  this,  and  it  is  strange  that  a 
custom  which  obtained  only  in  the  South  of  Europe 
of  using  oil  for  closing  bottles  of  wine,  should  have 
produced  an  expression  which  was  used  in  the  North 
of  Europe,  where  oil  was  never  used  for  that  purpose. 
That  shows  how  words  travel  forward  and  backward 
over  the  whole  world. 

When  I  was  in  Cornwall  I  heard  the  smoked  pil- 
chards called  by  the  people  Fair  Maids.  I  tried  to 
find  out  why,  and  this  was  the  result  of  my  inquiries. 
These  smoked  pilchards  are  largely  exported  to  Genua, 
and  are  eaten  there  during  Lent.  They  are  called  in 
Italian  fumada,  smoked  fish.  The  Cornish  sailors 
picked  up  that  word,  naturalised  it,  gave  it  an  intel- 
ligible meaning,  and  thus  became,  according  to  their 
own  confession,  exporters  of  fair  maids.  You  see  the 
Odyssey  and  the  adventures  of  Ulysses  are  nothing 
compared  with  the  adventures  of  our  words. 

A  carpenter  once  told  me  that  the  boards  of  a  box 
ought  to  be  properly  dowald.  I  did  not  understand 
what  he  meant,  and  it  was  only  when  he  showed  me 
the  actual  process  that  I  saw  that  to  dowal  meant  to 
dove-tail,  to  cut  the  ends  so  that  they  should  fit  like 
dove-tails. 

Scientific  terms  are  likewise  technical  terms,  only 
put  into  Greek  or  Latin.  What  can  be  achieved  in  the 
manufacture  of  such  terms  may  be  gathered  from  the 
following  extract  from  a  book  on  Botany  : 1 

"Begoniaceae,  by  their  anthero-connectival  fabric 
indicate  a  close  relationship  with  anonaceo-hydro- 

1  Marsh,  Lectures  on  the  English  Language,  p.  186. 


20  SCIENCE  OP  LANGUAGE. 

charicleo-nymphaeoid  forms,  an  affinity  confirmed  by 
the  serpentarioid  flexuoso-nodulous  stem,  the  lirioden- 
droid  stipules,  and  cissoid  and  victorioid  foliage  of  a 
certain  Begonia  ;  and  if  considered  hypogynous,  would 
in  their  triquetrous  capsule,  alate  seed,  apetalism,  and 
tufted  stamination,  represent  the  floral  fabric  of  Ne- 
penthes, itself  of  aristolochioid  affinity,  while  by  its 
pitchered  leaves,  directly  belonging  to  Sarracenias  and 
Dionaeas." 

I  doubt  whether  any  Englishman,  unless  he  be  a 
botanist  by  profession,  would  understand  the  hidden 
meaning  of  these  sentences,  and  though  these  words 
have  to  be  admitted  into  an  English  dictionary  that 
professes  to  be  complete,  they  cannot  be  said  to  form 
part  of  the  commonwealth  of  English  undefiled. 

If,  then,  we  confine  our  attention  to  those  words 
which  form  the  real  stock  in  trade  of  the  English  lan- 
guage, our  task  will  become  much  more  manageable. 
Instead  of  250,000,  we  shall  have  to  deal  with  about 
4,000  truly  English  words,  or,  if  we  include  all  French, 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Celtic  primaries,  with  12,350 
words,  and  then  ask  ourselves  once  more  the  ques- 
tion, Whence  do  they  come? 

No  one  can  help  seeing  that  even  amongst  the  most 
ordinary  words  in  English  there  are  some  which  are 
very  much  alike  in  sound.  If  these  words  have  also 
some  similarity  in  meaning,  we  are  justified  in  suppos- 
ing that  they  may  have  a  common  origin. 

Take,  for  instance,  such  words  as  to  bear,  burden, 
bier,  and  barrow.  They  all  have  the  same  constituent 
element,  namely,  br\  they  all  have  a  meaning  connected 
with  bearing  or  carrying.  Burden  is  what  is  carried ; 
bier,  what  a  person  is  carried  on ;  barrow,  in  wheel- 
barrow, an  implement  for  carrying  things. 


FIRST  LECTURE.  21 

No  doubt,  this  is  only  prima  facie  evidence.  We 
must  not  forget  that  we  are  dealing  with  a  modern 
language  which  has  passed  through  many  vicissitudes. 
In  order  to  institute  truly  scientific  comparisons,  we 
should  have  in  each  case  to  trace  these  words  to  their 
Anglo-Saxon,  or  even  to  their  corresponding  Gothic 
forms. 

How  great  the  danger  is  of  trusting  to  mere  simi- 
larity of  sound  in  modern  languages,  you  will  see  at 
once,  if  you  take  the  last  word  barrow,  which  means 
not  only  a  wheelbarrow,  but  also  a  burial-mound. 
We  have  only  to  trace  this  barrow  back  to  its  Anglo- 
Saxon  form  beorh,  in  order  to  see  that  it  has  nothing 
to  do  with  bearing  or  carrying,  but  that  it  is  connected 
with  the  Anglo-Saxon  beorgan,  the  German  bergen,  to 
hide,  to  protect. 

But  though  it  is  necessary,  before  we  institute 
comparisons,  always  to  go  back  to  the  oldest  forms  of 
words  which  are  within  our  reach,  still  for  practical 
purposes  it  suffices  if  we  know  that  such  words  as  bear, 
burden,  bier,  and  barrow  have  all  been  proved  to  come 
from  one  common  source. 

And  more  than  this.  As  to  bear  is  used  in  many 
languages  in  the  sense  of  bearing  children,  we  may 
safely  trace  to  the  same  source  such  English  words  as 
birth,  and  bairn,  a  child. 

.Nay,  as  the  same  expression  is  also  used  of  the 
earth-bearing  fruit,  we  can  hardly  be  wrong  in  ex- 
plaining, for  instance,  barley,  as  what  the  earth  bears 
or  brings  forth.  In  German  Getreide,  M.  H.  G.  Ge- 
tregede,  literally,  what  is  born,  has  become  the  name  of 
every  kind  of  corn.  If  we  go  back  to  Anglo-Saxon, 
we  find  bcer-lic  for  barley,  in  which  lie  is  derivative, 
while  here  by  itself  meant  barley.  In  Scotland  more 


11  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

particularly  bear  continued  to  be  used  for  barley,  and  a 
coarse  kind  of  barley  is  still  called  bear-barley.  Barn 
also  receives  its  explanation  from  the  same  quarter. 
For  barn  is  contracted  from  bere-cern,  which  means 
barley-house,  or,  as  also  called,  bere-flor. 

We  have  thus  collected  eight  words,  which  all  con- 
tain one  common  element,  namely  br,  and  which  prima 
facie  come  from  the  same  source.  Their  various 
meanings,  as  we  saw,  can  likewise  be  traced  back  to 
the  one  fundamental  concept  of  bearing. 

From  every  one  of  these  words  ever  so  many  de- 
rivatives may  be  formed,  and  have  been  formed. 

Think  only  of  the  numerous  offspring  of  to  bear, 
and  the  various  meanings  that  can  be  conveyed  by  that 
one  word.  We  have,  to  bear  up,  to  bear  out,  to  bear 
oneself,  proud  bearing,  to  bear  in  mind,  to  bear  with, 
to  forbear  ;  then  to  bear  down  on  a  person,  in  the 
sense  of  to  press  hard  on  him,  to  bear  away,  said  of  a 
ship  that  sails  away,  to  lose  one's  bearings,  bearable, 
unbearable,  a  bearer,  an  office-bearer,  bearing  in  the 
sense  of  behavior,  child-bearing,  and  many  more. 

Now  you  begin  to  see  how  thrifty  language  can  be, 
and  what  immense  results  it  can  achieve  with  very 
small  means.  It  starts  with  a  syllable  of  two  conso- 
nants, such  as  bar,  and  out  of  it,  by  means  of  deriva- 
tives, it  forms  a  perfect  army  of  words.  If  we  had  a 
hundred  such  syllables,  and  derived  only  forty  words 
from  each,  we  should  possess  what,  as  we  found,  is 
wanted  for  carrying  on  all  social  and  intellectual  inter- 
course, namely,  4,000  words. 

But  now  we  shall  be  asked,  What  are  those  mys- 
terious syllables?  What  is,  for  instance,  that  bar, 
which  we  discovered  as  the  kernel  of  ever  so  many 
words? 


FIRST  LECTURE.  23 

These  syllables  have  been  called  roots.  That  is,  of 
course,  nothing  but  a  metaphorical  expression.  What 
is  meant  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  what  you  saw 
just  now  as  the  result  of  our  comparison — namely, 
what  remains  of  a  number  of  words  after  we  separate 
the  purely  formative  elements.  In  bur-den,  den  is 
formative  :  in  birth,  th  is  formative  ;  in  bairn,  n  is  form- 
ative. In  barn,  too,  n  is  formative,  but  it  is  different 
from  the  n  in  bairn,  because  it  is  really  a  contraction 
of  cern.  Bere-czrn  meant  a  place  for  barley,  just  as 
horsern  meant  a  place  for  horses,  a  stable,  slcepern,  a 
sleeping-place.1 

There  remains  therefore  bar  with  a  variable  vowel, 
and  this  we  call  a  root,  or  an  ultimate  element  of 
speech,  because  it  cannot  be  analysed  any  further. 

This  root  bar,  however,  is  not  an  English  root.  It 
existed  long  before  English  existed,  and  we  find  it 
again  in  Latin,  Greek,  Celtic,  Slavonic,  Zend,  and 
Sanskrit,  that  is,  in  all  the  languages  which  form  what 
is  called  the  Aryan  family  of  speech.  As  this  root  bar 
exists  in  Latin  as/er,  in  Greek  as  <psp,  in  Celtic  as  ber, 
in  Slavonic  as  ber,  in  Zend  as  bar,  and  in  Sanskrit  as 
bhar,  it  is  clear  that  it  must  have  existed  before  these 
languages  separated,  and  that,  as  you  may  imagine, 
must  have  been  a  very,  very  long  time  ago. 

But  you  may  ask,  How  did  these  roots  exist  ? 
Were  they  ever  independent  words,  or  did  they  only 
exist  in  their  derivatives?  Of  course,  it  is  impossible 
to  answer  this  question  by  historical  evidence.  If  any- 
thing deserves  to  be  called  pre-historic,  it  is  the  period 
of  language  which  precedes  the  formation  of  Sanskrit, 
Greek,  and  Latin.  But  if  we  argue  by  analogy,  we 
may  say  that  as  in  Chinese,  so  in  this  Proto-Aryan 

1  Morris,  Historical  Outlines,  §  322. 


24  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

language,  these  roots,  without  any  formative  suffixes 
or  prefixes,  were  probably  used  by  themselves.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  quite  true  that,  as  soon  as  one  of  these 
roots  was  used  either  as  a  subject  or  as  a  predicate,  it 
had  really  ceased  to  be  a  root  in  the  true  sense  of  that 
word,  and  had  become  a  noun,  or  a  verb,  or  an  ad- 
jective. 

Hitherto,  it  seems  to  me,  there  is  nothing  difficult, 
nothing  uncertain,  nothing  mysterious  in  this  process 
of  taking  our  language  to  pieces,  and  separating  the 
radical  from  the  formal  elements.  It  is  no  more  than 
cracking  a  nut  and  separating  the  kernel  from  the 
shell.  What  the  result  of  this  cracking  and  peeling 
has  been,  I  shall  try  to  explain  to  you  in  my  next 
lecture. 


SECOND  LECTURE. 


THE  ANALYSIS  OF  LANGUAGE. 


WE  SAW  at  the  end  of  our  .last  lecture  by  what 
process  the  constituent  elements  of  a  language 
can  be  discovered.  It  is  a  very  simple  process.  You 
take  a  word,  remove  from  it  all  that  can  be  accounted 
for,  that  is,  all  that  can  be  proved  to  be  purely  forma- 
tive and  derivative;  and  what  cannot  be  accounted 
for,  what  cannot  be  further  analysed,  you  accept  as  an 
element,  as  an  ultimate  fact,  or,  as  scholars  are  in  the 
habit  of  calling  it,  as  a  root. 

Now  let  me  tell  you,  first  of  all,  that  this  chemical 
analysis  of  words  is  by  no  means  a  new  invention. 
It  was  performed  for  the  first  time  more  than  2,000 
years  ago  by  the  grammarians  of  India.  They  reduced 
the  whole  of  their  abounding  language  to  about  1,706 
roots.1  Given  these  roots,  they  professed  to  be  able 
to  account  for  every  word  in  Sanskrit,  and  to  a  certain 
extent  they  achieved  it.  Considering  the  time  when 
that  experiment  was  carried  out,  it  strikes  us  as  per- 
fectly marvellous.  We,  in  Europe,  were  still  savages 
at  that  time,  entirely  unacquainted  with  letters  or 
literature.  Still,  we  have  made  some  advance  over 

1  Science  of  Language,  Vol.  I.  p.  306. 


26  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

Patfini,  and  Mr.  Edgren  has  reduced  the  number  of 
necessary  roots  to  816,  afterwards  to  633,  and  at  last 
to  587. l  With  these  roots  he  thinks  that  the  great 
bulk  of  the  Sanskrit  vocabulary  can  be  accounted  for. 
And  here  again  we  may  say  that,  with  certain  well- 
understood  exceptions,  this  promise  has  been  fulfilled. 
For  instance,  the  root  bar,  or  bhar,  particularly  if  we 
include  the  words  derived  from  Latin/<?r;r  and  adopted 
in  English,  such  as,  for  instance,  fertile,  far  (barley), 
farina,  barley-flower,  reference,  deference,  conference, 
difference,  inference,  preference,  transference,  and  all  the 
rest,  would  yield  more  than  a  hundred  English  words. 
We  should  not  want  therefore  more  than  a  hundred 
such  roots  to  account  for  10,000  words  in  English. 
Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  number  of  Aryan  roots 
which  have  left  offspring  in  English,  is  only  about 
460.  '2  When  all  the  offspring  of  a  root  dies,  of  course 
the  root  itself  comes  to  an  end,  and  this  is  what  has 
happened  to  a  number  of  roots  which  are  required  to 
account  for  words  in  Sanskrit,  Greek,  and  Latin,  but 
no  longer,  for  any  words  existing  in  English. 

It  stands  to  reason  that  all  these  statements  are 
broad  statements.  There  is  in  every  language  a  con- 
siderable residue  of  words  which  has  not  yet  been 
traced  back  to  any  root.  There  are  likewise  many 
words  which  are  not  to  be  derived  from  roots  at  all, 
but  come  straight  from  imitations  of  sounds,  or  inter- 
jections. To  this  class  belong  such  words  as  cuckoo, 
moo  (cow),  bah  (lamb),  to  click,  to  hiss.  The  Greeks 
called  the  formation  of  such  words  onomatopoeia  or 
word-manufacturing,  by  which  they  meant  that  they 
formed  a  class  by  themselves,  that  they  were  mere 

1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  377. 

SSkeat,  Etymological  Dictionary,  pp.  729,  seq. 


SECOND  LECTURE.  27 

made  words,  artificial  words,  not  real  and  natural 
words,  like  all  the  rest. 

Besides  there  are  interjections,  such  as  ah,  oh,  fie, 
pooh,  pah,  and  all  the  rest. 

Still,  to  put  the  matter  broadly — and  I  cannot  here 
attempt  more  than  to  give  you  the  broad  outlines  of 
the  Science  of  Language — we  have  now  come  to  this. 
Instead  of  being  startled  and  staggered  by  250,000  of 
words,  all  crowding  in  upon  us  and  asking  us  what 
they  are  and  whence  they  came,  we  are  now  only  con- 
fronted by  four  or  five  hundred  words  or  roots,  and 
have  to  render  some  account  of  them.  If  we  can  do 
that,  the  world-old  riddle  of  the  origin  of  language  is 
solved.  How  from  these  roots  the  whole  wealth  of 
English  was  evolved  has  been  shown  by  Comparative 
Grammer.  Here  all  formative  elements,  such  as  suf- 
fixes, prefixes,  infixes,  all  case-terminations,  all  per- 
sonal and  tense-terminations,  have  been  classified, 
and  traced  back,  more  or  less  successfully,  to  so-called 
demonstrative  elements.  Here  also  much  remains 
still  to  be  done,  but  the  broad  fact  is  established  once 
for  all,  that  all  we  call  grammar  is  the  result  of  syn- 
thesis between  predicative  roots  and  demonstrative 
elements,  often  also  between  words,  ready  made. 

Thus  birth  was  originally  bhar,  to  bear,  plus  a  de- 
monstrative element  ti,  in  English  th,  which  localises 
the  act  of  bearing  here  and  there. 

The  Sanskrit  bi-bhar-mi  shows  us  the  same  root 
reduplicated,  so  as  to  express  continuous  action,  and 
followed  by  m  i  as  a  personal  demonstrative.  Bearing-I 
comes  to  mean,  I  bear. 

The  English  bear-able  is  a  compound  of  bear  with 
the  Roman  suffix  able,  the  Latin  abilis,  which  ex- 
presses fitness. 


28  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

Instances  of  composition  of  ready-made  words,  we 
have  in  English  in  such  words  as  huzzy,  which  stands 
for  housewife  ;  or  world,  which  stands  for  wear  =  man, 
and  yld,  age  ;  god-less,  which  means  loose  or  away  from 
God  ;  god-ly,  which  means  like  God. 

We  have  now  to  face  the  final  question,  What  are 
these  roots  ?  If  we  can  answer  that,  we  shall  know 
what  language  is.  We  shall  not  simply  stare  at  it  in 
silent  wonderment,  nor  shall  we  repeat  the  old  answer 
that  we  learnt  it  from  our  mother,  and  our  mother 
from  her  mother,  and  thus  ad  infinitum.  We  shall 
probably  wonder  at  it  all  the  more,  but  with  an  intel- 
ligent wonder  and  pleasure,  and  not  simply  with  a 
vacant  stare,  that  so  much  could  have  been  made  out 
of  so  little. 

All  roots  which  we  find  in  English,  in  Sanskrit,  or 
rather  in  that  stratum  of  language  which  lies  even 
beneath  Sanskrit,  are  perfectly  definite  in  sound. 
Their  consonants  are  guttural,  dental,  or  labial,  surd, 
sonant,  or  aspirated.  These  consonants  can  be  modi- 
fied according  to  certain  rules,  but  they  are  not  vague 
and  indefinite,  as  is  often  the  case  with  the  vowels  and 
consonants  of  less  developed  languages. 

Secondly,  they  nearly  all  express  acts,  such  as 
bearing,  striking,  pushing,  cutting,  tearing.  And  you 
will  find,  if  you  trace  even  the  most  abstract  and 
elevated  notions  back  to  their  original  source,  they 
are  borrowed  from  such  material  concepts  as  tearing, 
pushing,  and  all  the  rest.  Abstract,  for  instance,  is 
what  is  torn  away,  elevated  what  is  pushed  aloft. 

Thirdly,  they  are  all  conceptual,  that  is  to  say  they 
do  not  express  a  single  percept,  as,  for  instance,  the 
sound  of  cuckoo,  or  moo,  or  bah,  but  they  signify  acts, 
or  qualities,  conceived  as  the  result  of  acts.  Percept^ 


SECOND  LECTURE.  29 

as  you  know,  is  the  technical  name  given  to  our  cog- 
nisance of  a  single  object  actually  perceived  by  the 
senses  ;  while  concept  is  the  technical  term  for  our 
cognisance  of  something  common  to  several  objects, 
which  can  never  by  itself  be  conceived  by  the  senses. 
Thus  snow  is  called  a  percept,  the  white  of  snow  a  con- 
cept. 

When  logicians  ask,  how  we  came  to  form  con- 
cepts, they  seem  to  see  no  difficulty  whatever  in  this 
process.  There  was  white  in  snow,  they  say,  in  chalk, 
and  in  milk  ;  and  the  sign  for  this  common  quality  was 
the  sound  white.  So,  no  doubt,  it  is  with  us  ;  but  in  the 
evolution  of  the  human  mind,  the  forming  of  concepts 
represents  quite  a  new  epoch,  and  like  everything  else 
in  that  evolution,  we  must  try  to  discover  some  natural 
necessity  for  it.  Now  the  first  natural  necessity  for 
our  taking  cognisance  of  two  or  more  percepts  as  one, 
lies  in  our  own  acts.  Most  of  our  acts  are  repeated 
acts.  We  do  not  strike,  or  push,  or  rub  once  only,  but 
repeatedly.  This  consciousness,  therefore,  of  our  own 
repeated  acts  as  one  action,  grew  by  necessity  into  our 
first  conceptual  knowledge,  and  that  primitive  con- 
ceptual knowledge  is  embodied  in  those  very  roots 
which,  as  we  saw,  were  the  feeders  of  all  human 
speech.  When  this  conceptual  tendency  was  once 
started,  it  would  go  on  growing  stronger  with  every 
new  generation,  till  at  last  our  whole  intellectual  life 
became,  as  it  now  is,  conceptual.  It  is  the  beginning 
of  this  peculiar  mental  operation  that  has  to  be  ex- 
plained, and  it  should  be  explained,  if  possible,  as 
brought  about  by  the  same  natural  necessity  which 
forces  us  to  see  and  to  hear.  I  do  not  say  that  the 
consciousness  of  our  own  repeated  acts  is  the  only 
possible  way  in  which  the  beginning  of  concepts  can 


30  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

be  explained.  All  I  say  is  that  it  is  the  most  natural 
explanation,  and  that  it  is  confirmed  in  the  most  un- 
expected way  by  the  facts  of  language. 

One  more  question  now  remains.  Why  should  the 
consciousness  of  our  acts  be  accompanied  by  certain 
definite  sounds,  such  as  bhar,  to  bear,  mar,  to  rub,  std, 
to  stop,  tan,  to  stretch?  Here  again  our  answer  can 
only  be  hypothetical.  Often  though  we  cannot  drive 
our  shaft  into  a  deep  geological  stratum,  we  can  guess 
by  analogy  what  its  constituent  elements  must  have 
been.  It  is  the  same  in  the  geology  of  language. 

With  regard  to  the  sounds  accompanying  our  no- 
tions, we  know  from  physiology  that  under  any  strong 
muscular  effort  it  is  a  relief  to  the  system  to  let  our  breath 
come  out  strongly  and  repeatedly,  and  by  that  process 
to  let  the  vocal  cords  vibrate  in  different  ways.  That  is 
the  case  with  savages,  and  it  is  the  case  even  with  us. 
These  natural  sounds  accompanying  our  acts  are 
called  clamor  concomitans.  Navvies  when  they  have  to 
lift  a  heavy  weight  together,  shout  Yo  heo.  Sailors, 
when  they  pull  together,  have  their  own  monotonous 
song.  Even  children,  when  they  march  or  dance, 
break  out  naturally  in  some  kind  of  rhythmic  sing- 
song. Here  we  have  at  all  events  a  hint, — for  I  will 
say  no  more, — how  this  natural  music  which  accom- 
panied the  acts  of  early  people,  this  clamor  concomitans, 
could  have  supplied  the  outward  signs  of  the  inward 
concepts  of  these  acts.  What  we  want  are  natural 
signs  of  concepts,  not  of  percepts.  If  our  thoughts 
and  our  language  consisted  of  percepts  only,  the  sound 
of  cuckoo  for  the  cuckoo,  of  moo  for  cow,  and  bah  for 
lamb  would  have  been  amply  sufficient.  But  we  must 
take  language  as  it  is.  Language  as  it  is,  is  derived 
from  sounds  which  express  the  consciousness  of  our 


SECOND  LECTURE.  31 

acts,  and  which  are  ipso.  facto  conceptual.  Such  sounds 
can  be  supplied,  as  it  seems  to  me,  through  one  chan- 
nel only,  namely,  from  the  sounds  which  accompany 
our  acts,  and  particularly  such  acts  as  are  performed 
in  common  with  our  fellow-men.  From  the  .fact  that 
these  primitive  acts  were  performed  in  common,  an- 
other advantage  arises,  namely,  that  the  sounds  which 
accompany  them,  and  which  afterwards  are  to  remind 
us  of  them,  are  naturally  understood  by  others  as  well 
as  by  oursdves,  in  every  part  of  the  world  where  a  be- 
ginning of  social  life  is  made. 

Let  us  see  now  what  are  the  results  at  which  we 
have  arrived,  not  by  a  priori  theories  about  language 
and  thought,  but  by  a  mere  analysis  of  facts,  of  the 
facts  of  language,  as  garnered  in  our  dictionaries  and 
grammars. 

We  found  that  a  small  number  of  insignificant  little 
syllables,  such  as  bhar,  or  dhar,  or  mar,  or  pat,  or 
•man  formed  the  elements  with  which  the  whole  Eng- 
lish language  had  been  put  together.  We  found  that 
a  somewhat  larger  number  sufficed  to  account  for  the 
whole  verbal  harvest  of  all  the  Aryan  languages,  such 
as  Sanskrit,  Persian,  Greek,  Latin,  Russian,  German, 
and  Welsh.  I  may  add  that  a  similar  analysis  of  the 
Semitic  languages,  such  as  Hebrew,  Syriac,  and  Arabic 
has  led  to  exactly  the  same  result,  and  that  in  other 
families  of  languages  also,  outside  the  pale  of  Aryan 
and  Semitic,  something  corresponding  to  our  roots 
has  been  discovered  as  the  residue  of  a  careful  etymo- 
logical analysis. 

We  may  now  with  perfect  safety  make  another  step 
in  advance. 

These  so-called  roots,  these  insignificant  little  syl- 
lables, which  form  the  foundation  of  all  that  we  call 


32  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

language,  form  at  the  same  time  the  impassable  bar- 
rier between  man  and  beast.  Whatever  animals  may 
be  able  to  do — and  no  one  who  has  watched  intelligent 
animals  without  preconceived  opinions,  can  doubt  that 
they  can  do  almost  everything  that  we  do,  only  in  their 
own  way — but  whatever  the  cleverest  animals  are  able 
to  do,  they  cannot  form  these  little  syllables  as  signs 
of  concepts.  And  as  what  we  mean  by  a  concept  can- 
not come  into  existence  except  by  a  sign,  we  may 
argue,  with  a  certain  amount  of  plausibility,  that  ani- 
mals have  not  what  we  call  concepts,  and  that  this  is 
the  true  reason  why  they  have  not  what  we  mean  by 
language.  It  may  seem  a  very  small  matter,  this  being 
able  to  use  a  number  of  syllables  as  signs  of  con- 
cepts ;  but  it  forms  nevertheless  the  sine  qud  non  of 
language,  and  no  one  will  venture  to  say  that  language 
is  a  small  matter,  even  though  it  consists  at  first  of 
300  words  only.  The  first  rays  of  language,  like  the 
first  rays  of  the  dawn,  change  the  world  from  night  to 
day,  from  darkness  to  light,  from  a  strange  phantom 
into  our  own  home.  However  humble  we  may  try  to 
be,  no  one  who  really  knows  what  language  means, 
and  what  it  has  done  for  us,  will  be  able  to  persuade 
himself  that,  after  all,  there  is  not  a  radical  difference 
between  him  and  the  parrot,  the  elephant,  or  the  ape. 
Here  then,  is  one  of  the  lessons  which  the  Science 
of  Language  teaches  us.  It  opens  our  eyes  at  first  to 
the  marvellousness  of  language,  and  makes  us  see  that 
the  language  which  we  speak,  and  which  seems  to  us 
so  very  simple,  so  very  natural,  so  very  familiar,  is 
really  something  so  magnificent,  so  wonderful,  so  dif- 
ferent from  everything  else  we  have  or  do  or  know, 
that  some  of  the  wisest  of  mankind  could  not  help 
themselves,  but  had  to  ascribe  it  to  a  divine  source. 


SECOND  LECTURE.  33 

It  shows  us  secondly,  that,  like  all  the  most  marvel- 
lous things,  language  also,  if  carefully  studied,  dis- 
closes a  simplicity  more  wonderful  even  than  its  sup- 
posed complexity.  As  chemistry  has  shown  us  that 
the  whole  universe,  the  sea  and  the  mountains,  the 
earth  and  the  sun,  the  trees  and  the  animals,  the  sim- 
plest protoplasm  and  the  most  highly  organised  brain, 
are  all  put  together  with  about  sixty  simple  substances, 
Comparative  Philology  has  taught  us  that  with  about 
400  simple  radical  substances,  and  a  few  demonstrative 
elements,  the  names  and  the  knowledge  of  the  whole 
universe  have  been  elaborated.  Only  by  being  named 
does  this  universe  become  our  universe,  and  all  our 
knowledge,  the  accumulation  of  the  labor  of  countless 
generations,  is  possible  only  because  it  could  be  handed 
down  to  us  in  the  sacred  shrine  of  language.  Let 
us  be  humble,  as  much  as  you  like ;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  let  us  not  depreciate  our  inheritance.  We  have 
not  made  our  language  ourselves,  we  have  received  it. 
We  are  what  we  are  by  what  those  who  came  before 
us  have  done  for  us.  Like  the  coral  islands  which 
have  been  built  up  by  the  silent  and  self-sacrificing  in- 
dustry of  millions  of  millions  of  living  beings,  our 
languages  have  been  elaborated  by  the  incessant  labors 
of  millions  of  millions  of  those  who  came  before  us. 
Whether  those  ancestors  of  ours  were  hairy,  whether 
they  had  tails,  whether  they  walked  on  all  fours,  or 
whether  they  climbed  trees — what  does  that  matter  to 
us?  Our  body  is  a  mere  conglomerate  of  cells.  It 
comes  and  goes,  it  is  born  and  dies.  It  is  not  ours, 
it  is  not  our  own  self.  But  whatever  these  prehistoric 
ancestors  of  ours  may  have  been,  they  were  able  to 
bring  to  maturity  and  to  compound  in  ever-varying 
forms  those  intellectual  cells  which,  for  want  of  a  bet- 


34  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

ter  name,  we  call  roots,  and  which  constitute  a  barrier 
between  ourselves  and  all  other  living  beings — a  barrier 
which  fortunately  does  not  vanish  by  being  ignored. 
The  Science  of  Language,  better  than  any  other  sci- 
ence, teaches  us  our  true  position  in  the  world.  Our 
bodily  frame  is  like  the  bodily  frame  of  the  animals  ; 
it  is  even  less  perfect  than  that  of  many  animals.  We 
are  beasts,  we  are  wild  beasts,  and  those  who  have 
fought  with  wild  beasts,  not  only  at  Ephesus,  but 
within  the  arena  of  their  own  hearts,  are  least  likely  to 
forget  that  lesson.  But  there  is  a  light  within  us, 
which  not  only  lights  up  our  own  true  self,  but  throws 
its  rays  upon  the  whole  world  that  surrounds  and  holds 
us.  That  light  is  language.  Take  away  that  language, 
and  man  is  lower  than  the  dumb  animals  of  the  field 
and  of  the  forest.  Give  us  that  language,  and  we  are 
not  only  higher  than  all  animals,  but  lifted  up  into  a 
new  world,  thinking  thoughts  and  speaking  words 
which  the  animal  may  obey,  may  even  imitate,  but 
which  no  animal  can  ever  create,  or  even  impart  to  its 
own  offspring. 


THE  LESSON  TAUGHT  BY  THE  SCIENCE  OF 
LANGUAGE. 

I  have  tried  hitherto  to  show  how  the  Science  of 
Language  teaches  us  our  true  position  with  regard  to 
animals.  Let  me  now  try  to  explain  to  you  how  the 
same  science  has  taught  us  likewise  our  true  position 
with  regard  to  our  fellow-men. 

I  mentioned  before  that  English  belongs  to  what  I 
call  the  Aryan  family  of  speech.  That  means  that  in 


SECOND  LECTURE.  35 

the  same  manner  as  Italian,  French,  and  Spanish  are 
derived  from  Latin,  English  and  the  other  Aryan 
languages  are  derived  from  a  more  ancient  language, 
which  is  lost,  but  which  must  once  have  had  a  very 
real  historical  existence.  This  lost  language  we  call 
Aryan,  or  Proto-Aryan.  The  descendants  of  the  Proto- 
Aryan  language  are  known  to  us  in  seven  great 
branches,  called  the  Teutonic,  the  Celtic,  the  Italic,  the 
Greek,  the  Slavonic,  the  Iranic,  and  the  Indie.  The 
first  five  constitute  the  North  -  Western  or  European, 
the  other  two  the  South-Eastern  or  Asiatic  division. 

Now  let  us  consider  for  a  moment  what  all  this 
means.  English  belongs  to  the  Teutonic  branch  of 
the  Aryan  family  ;  that  means  that  English,  and  Ger- 
man, and  Dutch,  and  Danish,  and  Swedish,  and  even 
Icelandic,  are  all  varieties  of  one  type  of  Aryan  speech, 
and  that  all  the  people  who  speak  these  languages  are 
held  together  by  the  closest  ties  of  a  linguistic  rela- 
tionship. 

It  is  said  that  blood  is  thicker  than  water,  but  it 
may  be  said  with  even  greater  truth  that  language  is 
thicker  than  blood.  If,  in  the  interior  of  Africa,  sur- 
rounded by  black  men,  whose  utterances  are  utterly 
unintelligible,  we  suddenly  met  with  a  man  who  could 
speak  English,  we  should  care  very  little  whether  he 
was  English,  or  Irish,  or  American.  We  should  under- 
stand him,  and  be  able  to  exchange  our  thoughts  with 
him.  That  brings  us  together  far  more  closely  than  if 
we  met  a  Welshman  speaking  nothing  but  Welsh,  or 
a  Scotchman  speaking  nothing  but  Gaelic  ;  or,  for  all 
that,  an  Englishman  who,  having  been  brought  up  in 
China,  could  speak  nothing  but  Chinese.  A  common 
language  is  a  common  bond  of  intellectual  brother- 
hood, far  stronger  than  any  supposed  or  real  commu- 


36  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

nity  of  blood.  Common  blood  without  a  common 
language  leaves  us  as  perfect  strangers.  A  common 
language,  even  without  common  blood,  makes  the 
whole  world  feel  akin. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  different  Teutonic  dialects 
have  changed  so  much,  that  at  present  an  Englishman 
can  hardly  understand  a  Dutchman,  a  Dutchman  can 
hardly  understand  a  German,  while  to  a  German, 
Danish  and  Swedish  and  Icelandic  sound  as  strange 
as  French  and  Italian.  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  dy- 
nastic and  national  feuds,  English,  Dutch,  Germans, 
Danes,  and  Swedes,  feel  themselves  as  one,  when 
brought  face  to  face  with  Slavonic  or  Romanic  nations. 
They  know  that  by  their  language,  if  not  by  their 
blood,  they  represent  a  unity  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
The  same  feeling  is  shared  most  strongly  by  all  Sla- 
vonic people.  However  much  they  may  be  separated 
from  each  other  by  government,  religion,  and  general 
civilisation,  against  Teutonic  nations  the  Slaves  are 
one.  There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  during 
the  middle  ages,  and  also  in  modern  times,  the  mix- 
ture of  blood  between  Slaves  and  Germans  has  been 
enormous.  The  Slavonic  names  of  places  and  families 
in  Germany,  and  the  German  names  of  places  and  fam- 
ilies in  Bohemia,  Poland,  and  Russia  tell  their  own  tale. 
Nevertheless,  a  man  who  speaks  Bohemian,  Polish,  or 
Russian,  feels  himself  a  Slave  ;  a  man  who  speaks 
German  feels  himself  a  German,  and  he  can  hardly 
understand  what  is  meant  when  -he  is  told  that  the 
blood  of  his  great-grandfather  was  either  Slavonic  or 
Teutonic.  Nor  do  I  think  that  any  biologist  has  as 
yet  given  us  a  scientific  definition  of  what  is  meant  by 
Slavonic  or  Teutonic  blood,  by  Slavonic  or  Teutonic 
hair,  or  skulls,  or  skin  ;  and  until  that  is  done,  such 


SECOND  LECTURE.  37 

undefined  words  should  simply  be  boycotted  in  all  sci- 
entific discussions. 

The  Science  of  Language,  however,  professes  to 
teach  us  something  else.  Whatever  the  so-called  na- 
tional antipathy  between  people  speaking  Slavonic 
and  Teutonic  and  Romanic  languages  may  be,  they 
have  now  to  learn  a  new  lesson — a  lesson  that  may 
bear  good  fruit  in  the  future,  namely,  that  these  very 
Slavonic,  Teutonic,  and  Romanic  languages,  which  at 
present  divide  the  people  who  speak  them,  belong  to 
one  and  the  same  family,  and  were  once  spoken  by 
the  common  ancestors  of  these  divided  and  sometimes 
hostile  nations. 

At  present  such  lessons  may  seem  to  possess  a  sci- 
entific interest  only,  in  so  far  as  they  have  made  schol- 
ars take  a  completely  new  view  of  the  ancient  history 
of  mankind.  The  old  idea  that  our  languages  were 
all  derived  from  Hebrew,  has  been  surrendered  long 
ago ;  but  it  was  not  surrendered  without  an  effort,  an 
effort  almost  as  great  as  that  which  made  the  world 
surrender  its  faith  in  the  central  position  of  the 
earth. 

After  that  came  a  new  surrender,  of  which  I  still 
remember  the  beginning  and  the  end.  I  myself  was 
brought  up  in  the  most  straitest  school  of  classical 
scholarship.  I  was  led  to  believe  that  there  were  only 
two  so-called  classical  languages  in  the  world — Greek 
and  Latin — and  that  all  the  other  nations  of  Europe 
were  more  or  less  of  barbarians  till  they  were  debar- 
barised  by  contact  with  Greek  and  Roman  civilisation. 
That  the  language  of  the  ancient  Germans  or  Celts 
could  have  been  anything  but  an  uncouth  jargon,  as 
compared  with  the  language  of  Homer  and  Virgil ; 
that  the  grammar  of  the  Goths  could  have  been  as 


38  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

perfect. as  that  of  the  Hellenes;  that  the  natives  of 
Gaul  and  Germany  could  have  possessed  a  religion,  a 
mythology,  and  an  epic  poetry  that  could  be  compared 
to  the  religion,  the  mythology,  and  the  epic  poetry  of 
Greeks  and  Romans — these  are  ideas  which  would 
have  been  scouted  by  all  scholars,  in  fact .  by  all  edu- 
cated people,  at  the  beginning  of  our  century.  But 
facts  will  have  their  way,  however  much  they  may  be 
scouted  at  first.  That  the  Gothic  language  was  as  finely 
organised  as  Latin,  admitted  of  no  contradiction.  That 
the  religion  and  the  mythology  of  the  Teutonic  nations 
flowed  from  the  same  source  as  the  religion  and  mythol- 
ogy of  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  had  to  be  granted  even 
by  the  best  Greek  and  Latin  scholars  of  the  day,  such 
as  Gottfried  Hermann,  Otfried  Muller,  and  Welcker. 
And  that  the  epic  poetry  of  Iceland,  and  of  Germany, 
the  Edda  and  the  Nibelunge,  contained  fragments  of 
as  peculiar  beauty  as  the  Homeric  poems,  was  freely 
acknowledged  by  the  foremost  poets  and  critics  in  Ger- 
many, such  as  Herder  and  Goethe. 

Though  no  one  would  have  denied  the  superiority 
of  the  Greek  genius,  and  though  the  glory  of  having 
raised  the  world  from  darkness  to  light  will  forever 
remain  with  the  Greeks,  yet  the  Greeks,  and  their 
pupils,  the  Romans,  could  no  longer  command  a  posi- 
tion apart  from  all  the  rest.  They  had  made  a  better 
use  of  the  talent  committed  to  them  ;  it  may  be  they 
had  received  from  the  beginning  a  richer  endowment. 
But  those  whom  in  their  pride  they  had  called  bar- 
barians, had  now  to  be  recognised  as  of  the  same  kith 
and  kin  from  the  beginning,  nay,  destined  hereafter  to 
outstrip  even  their  masters  in  the  historic  race  after 
the  true,  the  noble,  and  the  good.  Classical  scholars 
who  can  remember  the  events  of  the  last  fifty  years 


SECOND  LECTURE.  39 

know  best  how  radical  a  change  every  branch  of  clas- 
sical learning  has  undergone,  when  it  became  pos- 
sessed by  this  new  comparative  spirit. 

Like  many  movements,  true  in  themselves,  this 
movement  also  has  sometimes  been  carried  too  far. 
No  one,  it  was  boldly  asserted,  could  know  Greek  who 
did  not  know  Sanskrit  or  Gothic.  No  one  could  un- 
derstand Roman  mythology  who  had  not  studied  mod- 
ern folk-lore.  All  this  is  true  in  a  certain  sense,  but 
it  has  been  much  exaggerated.  Still,  our  historical 
horizon  has  been  permanently  enlarged.  Greeks  and 
Romans  have  been  placed  in  a  new  historical  environ- 
ment, and  so  far  from  losing  in  their  prestige,  they 
only  stand  forth  in  bolder  relief  by  the  historical  back- 
ground with  which  the  Science  of  Language  has  sup- 
plied them. 

But  if  this  feeling  of  fraternity  between  the  prin- 
cipal languages  of  Europe  can  only  claim  a  scientific 
and  literary  interest,  it  has  produced  very  practical 
results  in  other  quarters.  The  feeling  between  the 
white  and  the  black  man  is  deeply  engrained  in  human 
nature,  and  in  spite  of  all  the  arguments  in  support  of 
our  common  humanity,  it  was  not  to  be  wondered  at 
that  the  dark  people  of  India  should  look  upon  their 
white  conquerors  as  strangers,  and  that  the  white  rulers 
of  India  should  treat  their  dark  subjects  almost  as 
people  of  another  kind.  That  feeling  seemed  wellnigh 
unconquerable,  till  the  discovery  of  Sanskrit  proved 
beyond  all  manner  of  doubt  that  the  languages  spoken 
by  the  inhabitants  of  India  must  have  sprung  from 
the  same  source  as  Greek,  Latin,  and  English.  The 
name  Indo-European  marked  not  only  a  new  epoch  in 
the  study  of  language ;  it  ushered  in  a  new  period  in 
the  history  of  the  wrorld.  Language,  as  I  said  before, 


40  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

is  thicker  than  blood,  and  while  a  so-called  community 
of  blood  conveys  really  no  definite  meaning  at  all,  a 
community  of  language  that  extended  even  to  conso- 
nants, vowels,  and  accents,  proved  an  intellectual  fra- 
ternity far  stronger  than  any  merely  genealogical  rela- 
tionship. 

When  the  Hindus  learnt  for  the  first  time  that  their 
ancient  language,  the  Sanskrit,  was  closely  connected 
with  Greek  and  Latin,  and  with  that  uncouth  jargon 
spoken  by  their  rulers,  they  began  to  feel  a  pride  in 
their  language  and  their  descent,  and  they  ceased  to 
look  upon  the  pale-skinned  strangers  from  the  North 
as  strange  creatures  from  another,  whether  a  better  or 
a  worse,  world.  They  felt  what  we  feel  when  later  in 
life  we  meet  with  a  man  whom  we  had  quite  forgotten. 
But  as  soon  as  he  tells  us  that  he  was  at  the  same 
school  with  ourselves,  as  soon  as  he  can  remind  us  of 
our  common  masters,  or  repeat  some  of  the  slang 
terms  of  our  common  childhood  and  youth,  he  be- 
comes a  schoolfellow,  a  fellow,  a  man  whom  we  seem 
to  know,  though  we  do  not  even  recollect  his  name. 
Neither  the  English  nor  the  Hindus  recollected  their 
having  been  at  the  same  school  together  thousands  of 
years  ago,  but  the  mere  fact  of  their  using  the  same 
slang  words,  such  as  m  a  t  a  r  and  mother,  such  as 
b  h  r  a  t  a  r  and  brother,  such  as  s  t  a  r  a  s  and  stars,  was 
sufficient  to  convince  them  that  most  likely  they  had 
been  in  the  same  scrapes  and  had  been  flogged  by  the 
same  masters.  It  was  not  so  much  that  either  the 
one  or  the  other  party  felt  very  much  raised  in  their 
own  eyes  by  this  discovery,  as  that  a  feeling  sprang 
up  between  them  that,  after  all,  they  might  be  chips 
of  the  same  block.  I  could  give  you  ever  so  many 
proofs  in  support  of  this  assertion,  at  all  events  on 


SECOND  LECTURE.  4! 

the  part  of  the  Hindus,  and  likewise  from  the  speeches 
of  some  of  the  most  enlightened  rulers  of  India.  But 
as  I  might  seem  to  be  a  not  altogether  unprejudiced 
witness  in  such  a  matter,  I  prefer  to  quote  the  words 
of  an  eminent  American  scholar,  Mr.  Horatio  Hale. 
"When  the  people  of  Hindostan  in  the  last  century," 
he  writes,  "came  under  the  British  power,  they  were 
regarded  as  a  debased  and  alien  race.  Their  complexion 
reminded  their  conquerors  of  Africa.  Their  divinities 
were  hideous  monsters.  Their  social  system  was  anti- 
human  and  detestable.  Suttee,  Thuggee,  Juggernaut, 
all  sorts  of  cruel  and  shocking  abominations  seemed 
to  characterise  and  degrade  them.  The  proudest  In- 
dian prince  was,  in  the  sight  and  ordinary  speech  of 
the  rawest  white  subaltern,  only  a  '  nigger.'  This  uni- 
versal contempt  was  retorted  with  a  hatred  as  univer- 
sal, and  threatening  in  the  future  most  disastrous 
consequences  to  the  British  rule.  Then  came  an  un- 
expected and  wonderful  discovery.  European  philol- 
ogists, studying  the  language  of  the  conquered  race, 
discovered  that  the  classic  mother-tongue  of  Northern 
Hindostan  was  the  elder  sister  of  the  Greek,  the  Latin, 
the  German,  and  the  Celtic  languages.  At  the  same 
time  a  splendid  literature  was  unearthed,  which  rilled 
the  scholars  of  Europe  with  astonishment  and  delight. 
The  despised  Asiatics  became  not  only  the  blood-rela- 
tions, but  the  teachers  and  exemplars,  of  their  con- 
querors. The  revulsion  of  feeling  on  both  sides  was 
immense.  Mutual  esteem  and  confidence,  to  a  large 
extent,  took  the  place  of  repulsion  and  distrust.  Even 
in  the  mutiny  which  occurred  while  the  change  was 
yet  in  progress,  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  native 
princes  and  people  refused  to  take  part  in  the  out- 
break. Since  that  time,  good-will  has  steadily  grown 


42  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

with  the  fellowship  of  common  studies  and  aims.  It 
may  freely  be  affirmed,  at  this  day,  that  the  discovery 
of  the  Sanskrit  language  and  literature  has  been  of  more 
value  to  England  in  the  retention  and  increase  of  her  In- 
dian Empire,  than  an  army  of  a  hundred  thousand  men." 

This  is  but  one  out  of  many  lessons  which  the  Sci- 
ence of  Language  has  taught  us.  We  have  become 
familiarised  with  many  of  these  lessons,  and  are  apt  to 
forget  that  not  more  than  fifty  years  ago  they  were 
scouted  as  absurd  by  the  majority  of  classical  scholars, 
while  they  have  proved  to  be  the  discovery  of  a  new 
world,  or,  if  you  like,  the  recovery  of  an  old  world. 

But  there  are  many  more  lessons  which  that  science 
has  still  in  store  for  us.  There  is  still  much  gold  and 
silver  to  be  raised  by  patient  labor  from  the  mines  that 
have  been  opened.  What  is  wanted  are  patient  and 
honest  laborers,  and  it  is  in  the  hope  of  gaining  fresh 
recruits  that  I  have  ventured  to  invite  you  to  listen  to 
my  pleading. 


THIRD  LECTURE. 


THOUGHT  THICKER  THAN  BLOOD. 


I  HAVE  been  asked  the  question,  a  very  natural 
question,  and  one  that  has  often  been  .discussed 
since  the  discovery  of  Sanskrit  and  since  the  establish- 
ment of  a  close  relationship  between  Sanskrit,  Per- 
sian, Greek,  Latin,  Russian,  German,  English,  and 
Welsh — Does  the  close  relationship  of  these  languages 
prove  a  real  relationship  between  the  people  who  speak 
these  languages  ? 

At  first  sight,  the  answer  seems  very  easy.  As  a 
negro  may  learn  English  and  become,  as  has  been  the 
case,  an  English  bishop,  it  would  seem  as  if  language 
by  itself  could  hardly  be  said  to  prove  relationship. 
That  being  so,  I  have  always,  beginning  with  my  very 
first  contribution  to  the  Science  of  Language  —  my 
letter  to  Bunsen  "On  the  Turanian  Languages,"  pub- 
lished in  1854 — I  have  always,  I  say,  warned  against 
mixing  up  these  two  relationships, — the  relationship 
of  language  and  the  relationship  of  blood.  As  these 
warnings,  however,  have  been  of  very  little  avail,  I 
venture  to 'repeat  them  once  more,  and  in  the  very 
words  which  I  used  in  the  year  1854  : — 

1 '  Much  of  the  confusion  of  terms  and  indistinctness  of  prin- 
ciples, both  in  ethnology  and  philology,  is  due  to  the  combined 


44  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

study  of  these  heterogeneous  sciences.  Ethnological  race  and  lin- 
guistic race  are  not  commensurate,  except  in  ante-historical  times, 
or  perhaps  at  the  very  dawn  of  history.  With  the  migrations  of 
tribes,  their  wars,  their  colonies,  their  conquests  and  alliances, 
which,  if  we  may  judge  from  their  effects,  must  have  been  much 
more  violent  in  the  ethnic  than  ever  in  the  political  periods  of 
history,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  that  ethnological  race  and  lin- 
guistic race  should  continue  to  run  parallel.  The  physiologist 
should  therefore  pursue  his  own  science,  unconcerned  about  lan- 
guage. Let  him  see  how  far  the  skulls,  or  the  hair,  or  the  color, 
or  the  skin  of  different  tribes  admit  of  classification  ;  but  to  the 
sound  of  their  words  his  ear  should  be  as  deaf  as  that  of  the  orni- 
thologist must  be  to  the  notes  of  caged  birds.  If  his  Caucasian 
race  includes  nations  or  individuals  speaking  Aryan  (Greek),  Tur- 
anian (Turkish),  and  Semitic  (Hebrew)  languages,  it  is  not  his 
fault.  His 'system  must  not  be  altered  in  order  to  suit  another 
system.  There  is  a  better  solution  both  for  his  difficulties  and  for 
those  of  the  philologist  than  mutual  compromise.  The  philologist 
should  collect  his  evidence,  arrange  his  classes,  divide  and  com- 
bine, as  if  no  Blumenbach  had  ever  looked  at  skulls,  as  if  no 
Camper  had  ever  measured  facial  angles,  as  if  no  Owen  had  ex- 
amined the  basis  of  a  cranium.  His  evidence  is  the  evidence  of 
language,  and  nothing  else  ;  this  he  must  follow,  even  though  it 
were  in  the  teeth  of  history,  physical  or  political.  Would  he 
scruple  to  call  the  language  of  England  Teutonic,  and  class  it  with 
the  Low-German  dialects,  because  the  physiologist  could  tell  him 
that  the  skull,  the  bodily  habitat  of  such  language,  is  of  a  Celtic 
type,  or  because  the  genealogist  can  prove  that  the  arms  of  the 
family  conversing  in  this  idiom  are  of  Norman  origin  ?  With  the 
philologist  English  is  Teutonic,  and  nothing  but  Teutonic.  Ethno- 
logical suggestions  as  to  an  early  substratum  of  Celtic  inhabitants 
in  Britain,  or  historical  information  as  to  a  Norman  conquest,  will 
always  be  thankfully  received  by  the  philologist ;  but  if  every 
record  were  burnt,  and  every  skull  pulverised,  the  spoken  language 
of  the  present  day  alone  would  enable  the  philologist  to  say  that 
English,  as  well  as  Dutch  and  Frisian,  belongs  to  the  Low-Ger- 
man branch — that  this  branch,  together  with  the  High-German 
and  Scandinavian,  belongs  to  the  Teutonic  stock,  and  that  this 
stock,  together  with  the  Celtic,  Slavonic,  Hellenic,  Italic,  Iranic, 
and  Indie,  belongs  to  the  Aryan  family.  .  .  . 

"There  ought  to  be  no  compromise  of  any  sort  between  ethno- 


THIRD  LECTURE.  45 

logical  and  philological  science.  It  is  only  by  stating  the  glaring 
contradictions  between  the  two  sciences  that  truth  can  be  elicited. 
.  .  .  Ever  since  Blumenbach  tried  to  establish  his  five  races  of  men 
(Caucasian,  Mongolian,  American,  Ethiopian,  and  Malay),  which 
Cuvier  reduced  to  three  (Caucasian,  Ethiopian,  and  Mongolian), 
while  Prichard  raised  them  to  seven  (Iranian,  Turanian,  Ameri- 
can, Hottentots,  Negroes,  Papuas,  and  Alfourous),  it  was  felt  that 
these  physiological  classifications  could  not  be  brought  to  harmo- 
nise with  the  evidence  of  language This  point  was  never 

urged  with  sufficient  strength  till  at  last  Humboldt,  in  his  Kosmos 
(I.,  353),  stated  it  as  a  plain  fact,  that,  even  from  a  physiological 
point  of  view,  it  is  impossible  to  recognise  in  the  groups  of  Blu- 
menbach any  true  typical  distinction,  any  general  and  consistent 
natural  principle.  From  a  physiological  point  of  view,  we  may 
speak  of  varieties  of  man, — no  longer  of  races,  if  that  term  is  to 
mean  more  than  variety.  Physiologically  the  unity  of  the  human 
species  is  a  fact  established  as  firmly  as  the  unity  of  any  other 
animal  species.  So  much  then,  but  no  more,  the  philologist  should 
learn  from  the  physiologist.  He  should  know  that  in  the  present 
state  of  physiological  science  it  is  impossible  to  admit  more  than 
one  beginning  of  the  human  race.  He  should  bear  in  mind  that 
Man  is  a  species,  created  once,  and  divided  in  none  of  its  varieties 
by  specific  distinctions ;  in  fact,  that  the  common  origin  of  the 
Negro  and  the  Greek  admits  of  as  little  doubt  as  that  of  the  poodle 
and  the  greyhound.  .  .  ." 

I  have  made  this  long  extract  from  a  book  written 
by  me  in  1854,  because  it  will  show  how  strongly  I 
have  always  deprecated  the  mixing  up  of  Ethnology 
and  Philology,  and  likewise  that  I  was  a  Darwinian 
long  before  Darwin.  At  that  time,  however,  I  still 
entertained  a  hope  that  the  physiologist  might  succeed 
in  framing  a  real  classification  of  races,  on  the  evidence 
of  skulls,  or  the  skin,  or  the  hair,  as  the  philologist  has 
succeeded  in  framing  a  real  classification  of  languages, 
on  the  evidence  of  grammar.  But  in  this  hope  we 
have  been  disappointed.  Mankind  has  proved  ob- 
streperous ;  it  has  not  allowed  itself  to  be  classified. 
According  to  Darwin,  all  men  form  but  one  species, 


46  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

and  to  his  mind  that  species  overlaps  even  the  limits 
usually  assigned  to  mankind.  So  far  there  seems  to  be 
at  present  a  general  agreement  among  physiologists. 
But  all  further  attempts  at  classifying  the  human  spe- 
cies have  signally  failed.  Some  biologists  (Virey)  have 
proposed  two  classes ;  Cuvier  proposed  three,  Lin- 
naeus four,  Blumenbach  five,  B.uffon  six,  Prichard  and 
Peschel  seven,  Agassiz  eight,  Pickering  eleven,  Fried- 
rich  Muller  twelve,  Bory  de  St.  Vincent  fifteen,  Mor- 
ton twenty-two,  Crawford  sixty,  and  Burke  sixty-three.1 
This  does  not  prove  that  all  these  classifications  are 
wrong.  One  of  them  may  possibly  hereafter  be  proved 
to  be  right.  But  at  present  not  only  is  there  the  most 
decided  disagreement  among  the  most  eminent  biolo- 
gists, but  some  of  them,  and  these  men  of  high  author- 
ity in  biological  science,  have  themselves  given  up 
the  whole  problem  of  classifying  mankind  on  physio- 
logical grounds  as  utterly  hopeless.  Oscar  Peschel, 
in  his  classical  work,  The  Races  of  Man  and  Their  Geo- 
graphical Distribution,  sums  up  his  conclusions  in  the 
following  words :  "We  must  needs  confess  that  nei- 
ther the  shape  of  the  skull  nor  any  other  portion  of 
the  skeleton  has  afforded  distinguishing  marks  of  the 
human  races ;  that  the  color  of  the  skin  likewise  dis- 
plays only  various  gradations  of  darkness ;  and  that 
the  hair  alone  comes  to  the  aid  of  our  systematic  at- 
tempts, and  even  this  not  always,  and  never  with  suf- 
ficient decisiveness.  .  .  .  Who  then  can  presume  to 
talk  of  the  immutability  of  racial  types?  To  base  a 
classification  of  the  human  race  on  the  character  of 
the  hair  only,  as  Haeckel  has  done,  was  a  hazardous 
venture,  and  could  but  end  as  all  other  artificial  sys- 
tems have  ended." 

1  Horatio  Hale,  Race  and  Language,  p.  340. 


THIRD   LECTURE.  47 

Nor  does  Peschel  stand  alone  in  this  honest  confes- 
sion that  all  classification  of  the  human  race  based  on 
the  color  of  the  skin,  the  texture  of  the  hair,  the 
shape  of  the  skull,  has  completely  failed.  No  one 
has  of  late  done  more  excellent  work  in  ethnology 
than  the  indefatigable  Director  of  the  American 
Bureau  of  Ethnology, -Major  Powell.  Yet  this  is  what 
he  says1:  "There  is  a  science  of  anthropology,  com- 
posed of  subsidiary  sciences.  There  is  a  science  of 
sociology,  which  includes  all  the  institutions  of  man- 
kind. There  is  a  science  of  philology,  which  includes 
the  languages  of  mankind.  And  there  is  a  science  of 
philosophy,  which  includes  the  opinions  of  mankind. 
But  there  is  no  science  of  ethnology,  for  the  attempt 
to  classify  mankind  in  groups  has  failed  on  every 
hand." 

The  very  Nestor  among  ethnologists,  Horatio  Hale, 
from  whose  essay  on  "  Race  and  Language"2  I  have 
largely  quoted,  has,  after  a  long  life  devoted  to  eth- 
nological and  linguistic  studies,  arrived  at  exactly  the 
same  conclusion,  and  expressed  it  with  the  same  open- 
ness, that  the  classification  of  mankind  cannot  be 
founded  on  color,  hair,  or  skull,  but  must  be  founded 
on  language. 

This  is,  no  doubt,  a  great  collapse.  We  had  all 
been  brought  up  with  a  belief  in  a  white,  a  yellow,  a 
brown,  a  red,  and  a  black  race  ;  or,  if  we  entered 
more  deeply  into  the  subject,  we  seemed  perfectly 
certain  of  a  Caucasian,  Mongolian,  American,  Ethio- 
pian, and  Malay  race.  More  recently,  the  division  of 
the  human  race  according  to  the  texture  of  their  hair, 
as  proposed  by  Haeckel  and  adopted  by  Friedrich 

1  Science,  June  24,  1887. 

2  Popular  Science  Rei'iew,  January,  1888. 


48  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

Muller  in  his  learned  work  on  Ethnology,  was  accepted 
by  the  new  school  of  ethnologists  as  meeting  all  objec- 
tions that  had  been  made  to  former  classifications. 
Still,  it  is  far  better  to  confess  that  no  satisfactory 
classification  has  as  yet  been  discovered,  than  to 
maintain  that  hair,  color,  and  shape  of  skulls  have 
proved  real  criteria  of  racial  distinction.  It  does  not 
follow  by  any  means  that  further  research  may  not 
bring  to  light  a  real  divisor  of  the  human  race.  At 
present,  however,  color  of  skin  is  in  conflict  with 
shape  of  skull,  and  shape  of  skull  is  in  conflict  with 
texture  of  hair.  What  we  want  is  a  principle  of 
division  that  shall  do  justice  to  most,  if  not  to  all,  the 
essential  qualities  of  the  varieties  of  man,  provided 
always  that  such  essential  qualities  can  be  discovered. 
Till  this  is  done,  I  agree  with  Mr.  Horatio  Hale 
that  the  most  satisfactory,  nay  the  only  possible  di- 
vision of  the  human  race,  is  that  which  is  based  on 
language.  No  one  doubts  that  languages  can  be 
classified,  and  that  the  true  principle  of  classification 
is  their  grammar.  If  some  languages  stand  as  yet 
apart,  which  hereafter  may  be  proved  to  be  related, 
or  if  other  languages  have  not  as  yet  been  analysed 
at  all,  that  does  not  interfere  with  the  enormous  area 
of  human  speech  which  has  been  carefully  surveyed. 
It  is,  of  course,  of  that  area  alone  that  we  can  make 
any  assertion,  and  our  assertion  is  that  the  people 
who  speak  the  same  or  cognate  languages  may,  nay 
must,  be  treated  as  closely  related.  In  modern  times 
the  frequent  intercourse  between  all  the  people  of  the 
world,  and  the  facility  with  which  foreign  languages 
may  be  acquired,  are  apt  to  make  us  look  upon  lan- 
guage as  something,  not  essential,  but  purely  acciden- 
tal. But  that  was  not  the  case  in  ancient  times  ;  and 


THIRD  LECTURE.  49 

though  the  acquisition  of  a  foreign  language  may  be 
accidental,  language  as  such  is  not.  It  is  language 
that  makes  man.  Language  is  surely  more  of  the  es- 
sence of  man  than  his  skin,  or  his  color,  or  his  skull, 
or  his  hair.  Blood,  flesh,  and  bone  are  not  of  our  true 
essence.  They  are  in  a  constant  flux,  and  change  with 
every  year,  till  at  last  they  return  to  the  dust.  Our 
body  is  our  uniform,  very  tight  sometimes,  very  pain- 
ful to  don,  very  painful  to  doff,  but  still  our  uniform 
only.  It  matters  very  little  whether  it  is  black  or 
white.  Language,  on  the  contrary,  is  the  very  em- 
bodiment of  our  true  self.  Take  away  language, 
and  we  shall  indeed  be  mere  animals,  and  no  more. 
And,  besides  that,  it  is  language  that  binds  individ- 
uals together  into  families,  clans,  and  nations,  and 
survives  them  all  in  its  constant  growth,  thus  en- 
abling us  to  base  our  classification  on  general  and 
permanent  characteristics,  and  not  on  peculiarities 
which,  for  all  we  know,  may  be  the  result  of  climate, 
diet,  and  heredity. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  the  beginning  at  all 
events,  the  members  of  one  family  spoke  one  and  the 
same  language.  When  families  grew  into  clans  and 
nations,  they  would  continue  to  speak  the  same  lan- 
guage, and  if  colonies  started  from  their  original 
home,  they  could  not  but  carry  the  same  language  with 
them. 

But  it  is  objected,  that  in  the  spreading  of  nations 
a  mixture  would  necessarily  occur  between,  say,  white 
and  black  tribes. 

No  doubt  it  would,  and  it  is  for  this  very  reason 
that  physiological  classification  breaks  down,  while 
linguistic  classification,  though  it  becomes  more  diffi- 
cult, does  not  become  impossible.  After  blood  has 


5O  SCIENCE  OK  LANGUAGE. 

once  become  mixed,  no  scientific  test  has  yet  been 
discovered  for  distinguishing  its  ingredients.  No  one 
can  tell,  for  instance,  whether  the  offspring  of  a  white 
man  and  a  black  woman  should  be  classed  as  Cauca- 
sian or  as  Negro.  The  color  may  be  quite  white  or 
quite  black,  or  something  between  the  two.  The 
nose  and  mouth  may  be  Negro-like,  and  yet  the 
color  may  be  fair,  and  the  shape  of  the  skull  and  the 
texture  of  the  hair  may  be  Caucasian.  After  one  or 
two  generations  certain  varieties  may  either  become 
permanent,  or  they  may,  by  the  force  of  atavism,  re- 
turn to  their  original  type.  New  mixtures  of  mixed 
or  mongrel  offspring  with  other  mongrel  or  with  pure 
breeds  will  make  confusion  even  worse  confounded, 
and  after  hundreds  and  thousands  of  years,  the  very 
possibility  of  pure  breeds  may  very  justly  be  doubted. 
How  then  should  we  dare  in  our  days  to  classify  man- 
kind according  to  such  variable  peculiarities  as  color, 
skull,  or  hair? 

The  case  is  very  different  with  regard  to  languages. 
No  doubt,  while  this  social  intercourse  between  black 
and  white  people  takes  place,  the  white  might  adopt 
some  words  from  the  black,  and  the  black  from  the 
white  people.  But  these  words  could  nearly  always 
be  distinguished,  as  we  are  able  to  distinguish  French, 
Latin,  and  Greek  words  imbedded  in  English.  And 
there  would  always  remain  the  criterion  of  grammar, 
which  enables  us  to  say  that  English  is  and  remains  a 
Teutonic  language,  even  though  every  word  in  an  Eng- 
lish sentence  should  be,  as  it  often  is,  of  Latin  origin. 

Lastly,  it  should  never  be  forgotten,  that  if  we 
speak  of  Aryas,  we  mean  no  more  than  the  speakers 
of  Aryan  languages.  As  to  their  color,  skull,  or  hair, 
we  neither  assert  nor  imply  anything,  unless  we  hap- 


THIRD  LECTURE.  51 

pen  to  know  it  from  other  sources.  We  may  thus 
use  "languages"  as  a  synonym  of  "people,"  just  as 
Nebuchadnezzar  addressed  his  subjects,  "O  people, 
nations,  and  languages."  It  is  quite  possible — in  fact, 
it  is  almost  inevitable  in  the  constant  turmoil  of 
history — that  the  same  language  may  come  to  be 
spoken  by  the  white  and  the  black,  or  any  other  variety 
of  man.  We  take  that  for  granted,  and  we  should 
always  have  to  make  allowance  for  it,  whenever  we 
have  to  make  any  assertions  as  to  the  physical  appear- 
ance of  the  Aryan  or  Semitic  or  Turanian  speakers. 
But  even  then  there  remains  the  fact  that,  whenever 
there  is  a  mixture  of  language,  there  is  at  the  same 
time  a  much  greater  mixture  of  blood ;  and  while  it  is 
possible  to  analyse  mixed  language  by  scientific  tests, 
no  tests  whatever  have  as  yet  been  discovered  for 
analysing  mixed  blood.  It  would  be  very  hazardous 
to  say  that  hereafter  such  tests  may  not  be  discovered, 
and  that  a  classification  of  the  human  race  according 
to  physiological  peculiarities  is  altogether  impossible. 
What  I  maintain  is  that  all  attempts  hitherto  made 
have  failed,  and  that  if  we  want  to  classify  the  species 
to  which  we  belong,  we  can  only  do  it  on  linguistic 
grounds. 

Much  fault  has  been  found  with  a  remark  which  I 
made  many  years  ago,  that  the  same  blood  runs  in  the 
veins  of  the  Sepoy  and  of  the  English  soldier,  that  they 
are  brothers  in  blood  as  well  as  brothers-in-arms.  And 
yet,  though  it  is  difficult  to  prove  it  in  every  single 
case,  all  speaks  in  favor  of  supposing  that  the  soldier 
who  speaks  English  and  the  soldier  who  speaks  Ben- 
gali, must  be  descended  from  ancestors  who  in  far  dis- 
tant times  spoke  the  same  language  and  shared  the 
same  blood.  There  may  be  Sepoys  of  Mongolian  ori- 


52  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

gin  ;  but  though  of  course  I  did  not  mean  them,  yet  the 
probability  is  that  even  they,  if  they  have  learned  to 
speak  an  Indian  vernacular,  are  descended  from  an- 
cestors who  intermarried  with  women  of  Aryan  origin. 
As  a  rule,  no  tribe,  whether  conquered  or  conquering, 
adopts  the  language  of  the  conquerors  or  the  con- 
quered, and  abstains  at  the  same  time  from  inter- 
marriage. And  what  one  single  marriage  may  pro- 
duce can  easily  be  shown.  Let  there  be  one  couple 
of  a  black  man  and  a  white  woman,  and  suppose  they 
have  four  children,  two  boys  and  two  girls.  Let 
those  boys  and  girls  marry  outsiders,  whatever  their 
color  may  be.  Then,  if  each  of  these  four  couples  has 
again  four  children,  there  would  be  sixteen  mongrels. 
In  another  twenty  years  these  sixteen  might  produce 
thirty-two,  and  in  another  twenty  years  these  thirty- 
two  might  have  produced  a  total  of  sixty-four  mon- 
grels. If  this  process  is  carried  on  at  the  same  not 
very  extravagant  ratio  of  four  children  to  every  couple, 
about  six  hundred  years  would  suffice  to  produce  a 
population  of  2,147,483,648  human  beings,  all  mon- 
grels. This,  I  believe,  is  a  great  deal  more  than  the 
population  of  the  whole  earth,  which  is  said  to  amount 
to  no  more  than  1,400,000,000.  If  we  ask  what  the 
language  of  all  these  people  would  be,  the  answer  is 
easy.  It  would  be  the  language  of  one  of  their  two 
ancestors,  and  it  need  not  differ  from  that  language 
more  than  the  English  of  to-day  differs  from  that  of 
Robert  of  Gloucester.  But  however  much  it  differed, 
we  could  always  discover  whether  the  grammar,  the 
lifeblood  of  their  language,  was  like  that  of  the  Ne- 
groes or  like  that  of  the  Greeks.  With  regard  to 
color,  skull,  and  hair,  however,  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  hazard  any  conjecture.  If  the  original  white 


THIRD  LECTURE.  53 

man  and  black  woman  were  only  varieties  of  a  com- 
mon type,  and  their  color  was  due  to  climatic  influen- 
ces, their  offspring  might  be  neither  black  nor  white, 
but  any  color — grey,  brown,  or  red.  The  noses  of 
their  descendants  might  be  Greek  or  Negro-like,  their 
skulls  dolichocephalic  or  brachycephalic,  their  hair 
straight,  or  curled,  or  tufty. 

It  was  necessary  to  enter  into  this  subject  more 
fully,  because,  whether  from  a  dislike  of  the  idea  that 
the  same  blood  might  run  in  the  veins  of  the  Sepoy 
and  of  the  English  soldier,  or  from  some  other  cause, 
the  idea  of  an  Indo-European  humanity  has  often 
been  scouted,  and  our  ancestors  have  been  sought  for 
in  every  part  of  the  world  rather  than  somewhere  in 
Asia.  You  will  now  understand  in  what  sense  Indo- 
European  speech  is  equivalent  with  Indo-European 
race,  and  how  far  we  are  justified  with  Nebuchadnez- 
zar to  use  languages  as  synonymous  with  nations. 

It  may  be  that  the  practical  usefulness  of  the  lesson 
taught  us  by  the  Science  of  Language,  that  all  Aryas 
do  not  only  speak  the  same  tongue,  but  are  children 
of  the  same  parents,  is  at  present  confined  to  the  dark 
inhabitants  of  India  and  their  fair  rulers  who  came 
from  the  extreme  West  of  Europe.  But  in  time  to 
come  the  same  lesson  may  revive  older  and  deeper 
sympathies  between  all  Indo-European  nations,  even 
between  those  who  imagine  that  they  are  divided,  if 
not  by  language,  at  all  events  by  blood. 

The  Celts  of  Ireland  are  Aryas,  and  speak  to  them 
only  the  language  of  the  Aryan  brotherhood,  and  the 
wild  fancies  of  a  separate  Fenian  blood  will  soon 
vanish. 

The  French  are  Aryas,  and  more  than  that,  they 
are,  to  a  very  considerable  extent,  Franks,  and  their 


54  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

veins  are  as  full  of  the  best  Teutonic  blood  as  their 
language  is  of  the  best  Teutonic  speech.  Why  should 
the  French  and  the  Germans  not  learn  again  those 
neighborly  sentiments  which  have  made  the  westward 
march  of  the  Aryan  brotherhood  the  triumphal  pro- 
gress of  true  civilisation? 

The  Slaves  are  Aryas,  and  so  far  as  they  are  Aryas, 
tillers  of  the  soil,  (for  that  is  the  original  meaning  of 
the  word,)  they  have  preserved  some  of  the  noblest 
features  of  the  Aryan  race.  Why  should  they  be  taught 
to  look  upon  their  German  neighbors  as  aliens  and 
enemies,  when  they  have  so  many  interests  and  so 
many  duties  in  common  ?  Why  should  there  be  strife 
between  their  herdmen,  when  they  know  that  they  are 
brethren,  and  there  is  land  enough  for  all  of  them,  on 
the  right  and  on  the  left  ? 

These  may  seem  but  idle  dreams,  of  little  interest 
to  the  practical  politician.  All  I  can  say  is,  I  wish  it 
were  so.  But  my  memory  reaches  back  far  enough  to 
make  me  see  the  real  and  lasting  mischief  for  which, 
I  fear,  the  Science  of  Language  has  been  responsible 
for  the  last  fifty  years.  The  ideas  of  race  and  nation- 
ality, founded  on  language,  have  taken  such  complete 
possession  of  the  fancy  both  of  the  young  and  the  old, 
that  all  other  arguments  seem  of  no  avail? 

Why  was  Italy  united?  Because  the  Italian  lan- 
guage embodied  Italian  nationality.  Why  was  Ger- 
many united  ?  Because  of  Arndt's  song,  What  is  the 
German's  Fatherland  ?  and  the  answer  given,  As  far 
as  sounds  the  German  tongue.  Why  is  Russia  so 
powerful  a  centre  of  attraction  for  the  Slavonic  inhab- 
itants of  Turkey  and  Germany  ?  Because  the  Russian 
language,  even  though  it  is  hardly  understood  by  Ser- 
vians, Croatians,  and  Bulgarians,  is  known  to  be  most 


THIRD  LECTURE.  55 

closely  allied.  Even  from  the  mere  cinders  of  ancient 
dialects,  such  as  Welsh,  Gaelic,  and  Erse,  eloquent 
agitators  know  how  to  fan  a  new,  sometimes  a  danger- 
ous, fire. 

But  if  the  Science  of  Language  has  encouraged 
these  various  national  aspirations  in  places  even  where 
separation  and  national  independence  would  mean 
political  annihilation  ;  if  it  has  called  forth  a  spirit  of 
separatism,  it  has  also  another  lesson  to  teach,  that 
of  an  older,  a  higher,  a  truer  brotherhood — a  lesson 
too  often  forgotten,  when  the  opposite  lesson  seems 
better  to  answer  political  ends.  As  dialects  may  well 
exist  by  the  side  of  a  national  speech,  nay,  as  they  form 
a  constant  supply  of  life,  and  vigor,  and  homely  grace 
to  the  classical  language,  so  imperial  rule  does  not  ex- 
clude provincial  independence,  but  may  derive  from 
the  various  members  of  a  great  empire,  if  only  held 
under  proper  control,  its  best  strength,  its  permanent 
health,  and  that  delightful  harmony  which  is  the  re- 
ward of  all  true  and  unselfish  statesmanship. 


THE  CRADLE  OF  THE  ARYAS. 

And  now  let  us  return  once  more  from  the  present 
and  the  future  to  the  most  distant  past.  If  we  are 
all  members  of  the  great  Aryan  brotherhood,  the 
question  whence  the  Aryas  came,  and  what  was  the 
original  Aryan  home,  was  a  natural  and  legiti- 
mate subject  of  a  scholar's  curiosity.  The  question 
was  asked  and  answered  without  much  hesitation, 
though,  of  course,  with  a  clear  knowledge  that  the 
answer  could  be  speculative  only.  Traditions  among 


56  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

the  South-Eastern  Aryas,  the  Indians  and  Persians, 
might  point  to  the  North,  the  legends  of  North-Wes- 
tern  Aryas,  the  Greeks  and  Germans,  might  point  to 
the  North  or  the  East,  as  their  earthly  paradise ;  but 
such  dreams  would  be  of  little  help  in  settling  events 
supposed  to  have  taken  place  two,  three,  it  may  be  four 
or  five  thousand  years  before  the  beginning  of  our  era. 
The  only  arguments,  if  arguments  they  can  be  called, 
or,  we  should  rather  say,  the  only  impressions  by 
which  scholars  were  guided  in  giving  a  guess  at  the 
whereabouts  of  the  cradle  of  the  Aryan  race,  were  first 
of  all  geological,  and  afterwards  semi-historical.  Ge- 
ology tells  us  that  the  first  regions  inhabitable  by 
human  beings  were  the  high  plateau  of  Pamir  in  the 
Belurtagh,  and  the  chain  of  the  Caucasus  between  the 
Caspian,  the  Black  Sea,  and  the  Mediterranean.  No 
geologist  would  ever  think  of  any  part  of  Europe  as 
inhabited,  or  inhabitable,  at  the  same  period  of  time 
as  these  two  highest  points  in  Asia.  From  the  same 
high  plateau  spring  the  rivers  Oxus  and  Yaxartes, 
which  would  have  served  as  guides  to  the  West  and 
the  North-West,  and  the  Indus,  which  would  have 
served  as  a  guide  to  the  South-East ;  the  former  lead- 
ing the  Indo-European  race  to  Europe,  the  latter  to 
India. 

And  when  we  leave  these  distant  geological  per- 
iods, we  find  again  all  the  beginnings  of  what  we  may 
call  civilised  life  in  Asia.  I  say  nothing  of  China,  or 
Babylon  and  Assyria,  of  Egypt,  Phenicia,  and  Pales- 
tine. All  these  countries  were  teeming  with  civilised 
life  when,  so  far  as  history  tells  us  anything,  Europe 
may  still  have  been  a  sheet  of  ice,  a  swamp,  or  a 
howling  wilderness.  But  if  we  confine  our  attention 
to  the  Aryas,  we  find  them  entering  the  land  of  the 


THIRD  LECTURE.  57 

Seven  Rivers,  as  they  called  the  country  of  the  Pan- 
jab,  at  a  time  when  Europe  had  hardly  risen  above 
the  horizon  of  legend,  much  less  of  history.  If  we 
claimed  no  more  than  1000  B.  C.  as  the  date  of  that 
Aryan  immigration  into  India,  the  language  which 
they  brought  with  them  presupposes  untold  centuries 
for  its  growth.  When  we  proceed  to  Media  and 
Persia,  we  find  there,  too,  traces  of  an  ancient  lan- 
guage and  literature,  closely  allied  with  that  of  India ; 
and  we  can  watch  how  in  historical  times  these 
Medes  and  Persians  are  brought  in  contact  with  an 
even  more  ancient  civilisation  in  Babylon,  in  Egypt, 
and  in  Phenicia.  When  that  Median  and  Persian 
wave  rolls  on  to  Asia  Minor,  and  after  the  conquest 
of  the  Ionian  settlements  there,  threatens  to  over- 
whelm Europe,  it  is  repelled  by  the  Greeks,  whose 
civilisation  was  then  of  a  comparatively  recent  date. 
And  when,  after  the  Persian  wars,  the  stream  of 
Greek  civilisation  flows  westward  to  Italy,  and  from 
Italy  overflows  into  Gaul  and  Germany,  sweeping 
everything  before  it,  it  meets  there  with  hardly  any 
monuments  of  ancient  growth,  and  with  no  evidence 
of  a  language  more  primitive  than  Sanskrit,  or  of  a 
literature  and  religion  to  be  compared  for  freshness 
and  simplicity  with  the  religious  literature  of  the 
Vedic  age. 

It  might  have  been  intelligible  if,  under  these  cir- 
cumstances, the  cradle  of  the  Aryan  race  had  been 
sought  for  in  India  or  Persia,  possibly  even  in  Asia 
Minor,  in  Greece,  or  in  Italy.  But  to  place  that  cradle 
in  the  untrodden  forests  of  Germany,  or  even  on  the 
shores  of  the  bleak  Scandinavian  peninsula,  would 
seem  to  have  required  a  courage  beyond  the  reach  of 
ordinary  mortals. 


58  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

Yet,  this  feat  has  been  accomplished  by  some  Ger- 
man ethnologists,  and  the  south  coast  of  Sweden  has 
actually  been  singled  out  as  the  hive  from  which  the 
Aryas  swarmed,  not  only  into  Germany,  Italy,  Greece, 
and  Armenia,  but  into  Persia  and  India  likewise. 
Scholars  shook  their  heads  and  rubbed  their  eyes,  but 
they  were  told  that  this  counted  for  nothing,  and  that 
the  least  they  could  do  was  to  prove  that  Sweden  had 
not  been  the  original  home  of  the  Aryas.  Now,  you 
know  how  difficult  it  is  under  all  circumstances  to 
prove  a  negative ;  but  in  this  case  it  became  doubly 
difficult,  because  there  was  hardly  anything  adduced 
that  could  be  disproved.  There  was  no  evidence  of 
any  Aryan  people  having  lived  in  Sweden  much  be- 
fore the  time  when  Persia  invaded  Greece,  and  when 
the  ancient  Vedic  religion,  after  a  sway  of  many  cen- 
turies, after  long  periods  of  growth  and  decay,  was 
already  being  supplanted  by  a  new  religion,  by  Bud- 
dhism. The  statement  quoted  as  having  been  made 
by  a  defender  of  the  Scandinavian  theory,  that  the 
date  of  the  Aryan  migration  into  India  was  about  the 
seventh  century,  must  clearly  rest  on  a  misprint,  and 
was  probably  meant  for  the  seventeenth  century.  For, 
after  all,  whenever  the  Aryans  started  from  Scandi- 
navia, they  must  have  been  near  the  Indus  about 
1500  B.  C.,  speaking  Vedic,  and  not  modern  Buddhist 
Sanskrit;  they  must  have  been  in  Greece  about  1000 
B.  C.,  speaking  the  Dorian  dialect  of  the  Greek  branch 
of  the  Aryan  stock  of  speech.  They  must  have  been 
in  Asia  Minor,  speaking  the  Ionian  dialect  of  the 
same  Greek  branch  at  a  time  early  enough  for  their 
name  of  Varan  to  be  quoted  by  the  author  of  Genesis, 
for  their  name  of  Yauna  to  be  joined  with  those  of 
Media  and  Armenia  as  provinces  of  Persia  in  the 


THIRD  LECTURE.  59 

cuneiform  inscriptions  of  Darius  ;  nay,  possibly  for  the 
same  name,  under  the  disguise  of  Uinen,  being  found 
in  Egypt  in  the  hieroglyphic  inscriptions  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  B.  C. 

These  are  facts  that  have  to  be  accommodated, 
when  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  ancestors  of  all 
these  Aryas  came  from  Sweden,  where  we  know  of  no 
traces  of  human  life,  much  less  of  Aryan  life,  much 
before  these  very  wars  between  Persians  and  lonians. 
Even  then  we  only  find  kitchen-middens  and  funeral 
barrows,  and  who  is  to  tell  us  whether  these  beaux  restes 
of  prehistoric  dinners  were  left  by  Aryas  or  by  pre- 
Aryan  hordes,  and  whether  these  silent  dolichocepha- 
lic skulls  spoke  once  an  Aryan  or  non- Aryan  dialect? 

With  all  these  palpable  facts  against  them  it  can 
hardly  be  supposed  that  the  supporters  of  the  Scan- 
dinavian theory  had  no  arguments  at  all  on  their  side. 
Yes,  they  had,  but  let  us  see  what  their  strength 
really  is. 

It  has  been  said  that  Latham,  who  first  started 
this  theory,  pointed  out  that  at  present  the  number  of 
Aryas,  speaking  different  Aryan  dialects  in  Europe,  is 
much  larger  than  the  number  of  Aryas  in  Asia,  and 
that  it  would  therefore  be  absurd  to  derive  the  major- 
ity from  so  small  a  minority.  First  of  all,  I  doubt 
these  linguistic  statistics,  even  at  the  present  day.  I 
am  not  at  all  certain  that  the  number  of  people  speak- 
ing Aryan  dialects  in  Asia  at  the  present  moment  is 
smaller  than  that  of  Aryan  speakers  in  Europe.  But 
at  the  time  of  which  we  are  now  speaking,  say  500 
B.  C.,  when  one  great  period  of  language,  literature, 
and  religion  had  already  come  to  an  end  in  India,  the 
population  of  the  North  of  Europe  and  of  Scandinavia 
was  of  the  scantiest,  and  even  if  they  were  Aryas,  and 


60  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

not  Basks,  or  Laps,  or  Fins,  their  number  would  have 
been  a  mere  nothing  compared  with  the  enormous 
number  of  Aryas  at  that  time  living  in  India,  and 
Persia,  and  Asia  Minor.  How  then  these  Aryas  who 
composed  their  Vedic  hymns  on  the  banks  of  the  Seven 
Rivers  between  1500  and  1000  B.  C.,  should  have 
migrated  from  Sweden,  passes  my  understanding. 

A  stronger  argument  that  has  been  adduced  in 
favor  of  Sweden  being  the  cradle  of  the  Aryan  race, 
is  a  passage  from  Jordanes,  or  Jornandes,  as  he  is 
commonly  called.  At  all  events  we  have  here  some- 
thing tangible  that  can  be  handled,  that  can  be  proved 
or  disproved.  It  is  said  that  Jordanes  has  preserved 
the  ancient  tradition  that  Sweden  was  "the  manu- 
factory of  people,"  the  officina  gentium,  as  he  ex- 
pressed it. 

Before  we  quote  an  authority,  our  first  duty  is  to 
find  out  who  he  was  and  what  means  of  knowledge 
he  possessed.  Now  Jordanes  lived  about  550  A.  D. 
He  was  originally  a  notary  in  Bulgaria,  and  became 
afterwards  a  monk,  possibly  in  Ravenna.  He  wrote  a 
book  De  rebus  Gcticis  et  De  origine  actuque  Geticae 
gentis,  which  is  chiefly  based  on  a  lost  work  of  Cas- 
siodorus,  the  friend  and  adviser  of  Theodoric,  on 
Orosius,  and  on  similar  authorities.  He  himself  is  a 
most  ignorant  and  uncritical  writer.  Besides  that,  he 
writes  with  an  object,  namely  to  magnify  the  Gothic 
race  and  bring  it  somehow  in  connexion  with  Troy 
and  the  fabulous  ancestors  of  the  Romans.1  He  cer- 
tainly, whether  rightly  or  wrongly,  believed  that  the 
Gothic  and  other  German  tribes  among  whom  he  had 
lived  on  the  Danube,  came  from  the  north,  and  from 
Sweden.  He  therefore  called  the  island  of  Scancia  or 


THIRD  LECTURE.  6l 

Scandza  the  officina  gentium^  the  manufactory  of  peo- 
ples. But  by  these  peoples  he  clearly  understood  the 
Teutonic  tribes,  who  had  overrun  the  Roman  Empire. 
The  idea  that  other  nations,  such  as  Romans,  or 
Greeks,  or  other  Aryas  could  have  come  from  Sweden 
would  probably  have  completely  staggered  his  weak 
mind. 

On  such  evidence  then  we  are  asked  to  believe 
that  tradition  had  preserved  in  the  year  550  A.  D. 
some  recollection  of  the  original  migration  of  the 
Aryas  from  Sweden,  say  500  B.  C.  Poor  Jordanes 
himself  never  dreamt  of  this,  and  a  theory  must 
indeed  be  very  near  drowning  to  grasp  at  such  a 
straw. 

What  would  the  upholders  of  the  Scandinavian 
theory  say,  if  we  appealed  to  the  famous  legend  of 
Odin's  migration  from  Asia  in  support  of  the  Asiatic 
origin  of  the  Aryas  in  Europe?  And  yet  that  legend 
meets  us  only  a  century  later  than  Jordanes,  namely, 
in  Fredegar,  650  A.  D.,  and  then  grows  from  century 
to  century  till  we  find  it  fully  developed  in  the  Heims- 
kringla  and  the  Prose  Edda  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
nay,  believed  in  by  certain  scholars  of  the  present 
day. 

If  we  reason  soberly,  all  we  can  say  is  that  the 
separation  between  the  South-Eastern  branch  of  the 
Aryan  family,  the  Hindus  and  Persians,  and  the 
North-Western  branch,  the  Germans,  Celts,  Slavs, 
Greeks,  and  Italians,  cannot  be  proved  to  have  taken 
place  in  Europe,  because  at  that  early  time  we  know 
absolutely  nothing  of  Europe  being  inhabitable  or  in- 
habited by  any  race,  whether  Aryan  or  non-Aryan. 

IBs  hac  igitur  Scancia  insula,  quasi  officina  gentium,  aut  certe  velut 
vagina  nationum,  cum  rege  suo  Berich  Gothi  quondam  memorantur  egressi. 


62  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

The  angle  from  which  these  two  streams  of  language 
might  have  started  points  to  Asia,  and  points  to  that 
very  locality  where  geologists  tell  us  that  human  life 
became  possible  for  the  first  time,  the  high  plateau  of 
Pamir,  or  rather  the  valleys  sloping  down  from  it 
towards  the  South. 

We  can  construct  a  picture  of  the  life  of  these  as 
yet  undivided  Aryas  from  the  words  which  the  North- 
ern and  Southern  Aryan  languages  share  in  common, 
and  all  the  salient  features  of  that  picture  fit  in  with 
the  picture  which  recent  travellers  have  given  us  of 
the  neighborhood  of  Pamir.  Let  us  examine  a  few 
of  them. 

We  are  told  that  the  climate  is  cold,  the  winter 
long,  and  that  there  is  plenty  of  ice  and  snow.  We 
should  therefore  expect  that  the  Aryas,  before  they 
left  that  neighborhood,  should  have  formed  names 
for  snow  and  winter,  and  that  these  names  should 
have  been  preserved  in  both  branches  of  the  Aryan 
family.  And  so  it  is.  We  find  in  Sanskrit  the  same 
words  for  snow  and  winter  as  in  Greek,  Latin,  and 
German.  This  proves  at  all  events  that  the  original 
home  of  the  Aryan  language  could  not  have  been  in  a 
tropical  climate,  for  there  snow  and  ice  being  un- 
known, names  for  snow  and  ice  would  not  be  wanted. 

Snow  is  snizh  in  ancient  Persian,  snaivs  in  German, 
nix  in  Latin.  Winter  was  he1  man  in  Sanskrit,  x£Wa 
in  Greek,  /items  in  Latin,  zima  in  Slavonic.  Ice  is 
isi  in  Zend,  is  in  Old  High-German. 

The  most  common  trees  in  Northern  Kohistan  are 
the  pine,  the  birch,  and  the  oak.  One  of  these  trees, 
the  birch,  has  the  same  name  in  Sanskrit  and  in  Eng- 
lish. Birch  in  English  is  bhur^a  in  Sanskrit.  The 
names  of  the  other  trees  exist  in  the  South  and  the 


THIRD  LECTURE.  63 

North,  and  must  therefore  have  been  known  before 
the  Aryan  separation  ;  but  their  meaning  varies.  The 
word  which  in  Sanskrit  is  used  for  tree  and  wood  in 
general,  dru,  appears  in  Greek  as  dpvs,  meaning 
tree,  but  especially  the  oak.  In  German  triu  is  like- 
wise used  for  tree  in  general,  but  in  Celtic  daur  means 
the  oak,r  while  in  Lituanian  derva  has  become  the 
special  name  for  fir.  We  see  a  similar  change  of 
meanings  in  another  name  for  oak,  the  Latin  quercus. 
The  same  word  appears  in  Lombardian  asfereha,  and 
in  the  A.  S.  fur  A,  the  Knglishyfr.  The  beech  has  not 
a  common  name  in  Sanskrit  and  Greek,  whatever  the 
defenders  of  the  Scandinavian  theory  may  say  to  the 
contrary.  They  mistook  the  name  of  the  birch  for 
that  of  the  beech,  and,  more  than  that,  they  assigned 
a  wrong  habitat  to  the  beech. 

One  of  the  strongest,  if  not  the  strongest  argument 
against  the  Asiatic  origin  of  the  Aryas  has  always 
been  that  there  are  no  common  Aryan  names  for  lion, 
and  tiger,  and  camel  in  their  ancient  language,  while 
there  are  common  flames  for  swine,  sheep,  ox,  dog, 
and  horse.  First  of  all,  this  reasoning  is  not  correct. 
We  may  safely  conclude,  when  we  find  the  same 
words  in  Sanskrit  on  one  side  and  in  Greek  and  Latin 
on  the  other,  that  these  words  existed  before  these 
languages  separated,  and  that  therefore  the  objects 
signified  were  known.  But  we  cannot  conclude  with 
the  same  safety  that  because  the  same  words  do  not 
exist  in  these  languages,  therefore  the  objects  signi- 
fied by  them  could  not  have  been  known.  Words  are 
constantly  lost  and  replaced.  It  does  not  follow,  for 
instance,  that  the  Aryas,  before  they  separated,  were 
ignorant  of  the  use  of  fire,  because  the  Sanskrit  word 
for  fire,  agni,  is  not  to  be  found  in  Greek.  It  is  re- 


64  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

placed  in  Greek  by  nvp,  but  in  Latin  the  Sanskrit 
word  for  fire,  a  g  n  i ,  appears  as  ignis.  Though  the 
positive  argument  is  irresistible,  the  negative  argu- 
ment has  always  to  be  used  with  great  caution.  But 
the  latest  traveller  in  Kohistan,  M.  de  Ujfalvy,1  tells 
us  that  even  the  zoological  foundation  of  this  argu- 
ment about  lion  and  tiger  is  wrong,  and  that  these 
wild  beasts  are  not  to  be  found  in  those  cold  regions 
where  the  home  of  the  Aryas  is  most  likely  to  have 
been.  The  fact  therefore  that  the  Southern  and 
Northern  Aryan  languages  have  not  the  same  names 
for  lion  and  tiger,  so  far  from  being  against  us,  is  in 
perfect  harmony  with  the  theory  that  the  original 
home  of  the  Aryas  was  en  the  slopes  of  the  mountains 
which  form  the  junction  between  the  Hindukush  and 
the  Karakorum  chains,  what  may  be  called  Northern 
Kohistan. 

I  call  it  a  theory,  for  I  do  not  see  how  it  can  ever 
be  more  than  a  theory.  It  was  in  order  to  guard 
against  useless  controversy  that  I  have  always  con- 
fined myself  to  the  statement  that  the  Aryan  home 
was  "somewhere  in  Asia."  This  has  been  called  a 
vague  and  unsatisfactory  conclusion  ;2  but  all  who  are 
familiar  with  these  studies  know  perfectly  well  what 
it  meant.  No  one  would  suspect  me  of  deriving  the 
Aryas  from  India,  Persia,  or  Asia  Minor,  nor  from 
Burma,' Siam,  China,  Mongolia,  and  Siberia,  nor  from 
Arabia,  Babylon,  Assyria,  or  Phenicia.  Then  what 
remains?  Not  much  more  than  that  high  plateau 
from  which  the  Himalaya  chain  branches  off  toward 


1  Exftdition  scienti/ique  Francaise  en  Russie,  SibMe  et  Turkistan,  par 
Ch.  E.  D.  Ujfalvy  de  MezO-Kovesd,  Paris,  1878. 

2 See  Horatio  Hale,  -  The  Aryans  in  Science  and  History,"  in  The  Papula, 
Science  Monthly,  for  March,  1889,  P-  673. 


THIRD  LECTURE.  65 

the  south-east,  the  Kuen-liin  chain  towards  the  east, 
the  Karakorum  towards  the  west,  and  the  Hindukush 
towards  the  south-west :  the  region  drained  by  the 
feeders  of  the  Indus,  the  Oxus,  and  Yaxartes.  That 
is  still  a  sufficiently  wide  area  to  accommodate  the 
ancestors  of  our  Aryan  race,  particularly  if  we  remem- 
ber in  how  short  a  time  the  offspring  of  one  single 
pair  may  grow  into  millions. 

This  question  has  now  been  so  fully  discussed, 
and  so  splendidly  summed  up  by  a  Dutch  scholar,  a 
Jesuit,  worthy  of  the  name  and  fame  which  that  order 
once  possessed  in  literature  and  science,  Van  den 
Gheyn,1  that  I  hope  we  shall  hear  no  more  of  Sweden 
as  the  cradle  of  the  Aryas.  It  would  be  best,  perhaps, 
to  accept  a  proposal  made  in  the  interest  of  peace  by 
my  learned  friend  and  fellow-worker,  Professor  Sayce, 
who  thinks  that  he  might  be  able  to  persuade  all  eth- 
nologists to  use  the  name  Aryan  in  a  purely  physio- 
logical sense,  and  to  restrict  it  to  the  dolichocephalic 
people,  with  blue  eyes  and  blonde  hair,  regardless  of 
the  language  they  speak.  Whether  all  people  with 
blue  eyes  and  golden  hair  in  Greece  and  Italy,  in  the 
Caucasus,  in  Persia,  and  in  Central  Asia,  have  come 
from  Scandinavia,  ethnologists  would  then  have  to 
settle  among  themselves ;  but  we  should  at  all  events 
have  peace  within  our  borders.  Aryan  is  a  mere  ad- 
jective, which  we  could  well  spare.  We  should  then 
retain  the  old  classical  name  of  Arya  for  those  people 
who  brought  the  numerous  varieties  of  Aryan  speech 
from  Asia  to  Europe,  whose  thought  still  runs  in  our 
thoughts,  as  their  blood  may  run  in  our  veins — our 
true  ancestors  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  whether  their 
heads  were  long,  their  eyes  blue,  and  their  hair  golden, 

1  /-'  Origine  europiennc  des  Aryas,  Paris.     1889. 


66  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

or  whether  their  heads  were  round,  their  eyes  dark, 
and  their  hair  black. 

And  here  I  must  conclude  my  plea  for  the  Study 
of  the  Science  of  Language.  I  hope  I  have  shown 
you  that  it  really  is  a  disgrace  for  any  human  being 
to  go  through  life  without  some  knowledge  of  what 
language  is  and  what  it  has  done  for  us.  There  are 
certain  things  which  are  essential  to  education — not 
only  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic,  but  a  general 
knowledge  of  the  earth  on  which  we  live  {Geology  and 
Geography^} ;  of  the  sky  and  the  stars  which  tells  us  of 
infinite  law  and  order  above  {Astronomy)  ;  of  the  great 
men  who  have  made  the  world  what  we  found  it  (His- 
tory) ;  and  of  some  of  the  greatest  men  who  have  told 
us  what  this  world  ought  to  be  (Religion  and  Philoso- 
phy). I  add  to  these  the  Science  of  Language  which, 
better  than  anything  else,  teaches  us  what  we  really 
are.  You  have  only  to  try  to  imagine  what  this  world 
would  be,  if  it  were  inhabited  by  speechless  beings,  in 
order  to  appreciate  the  full  importance  of  knowing 
what  language  really  is  to  us,  and  how  much  we  owe 
to  language  in  all  we  think,  and  speak,  and  do. 

It  is  quite  true  that  life  is  too  short  for  any  human 
being  to  gain  a  thorough  knowledge  of  these  funda- 
mental subjects.  But  life  is  not  too  short  to  allow  us 
to  gain  a  sound  knowledge  of  the  general  outline  of 
these  subjects,  and  of  the  results  that  have  been  gar- 
nered up  in  some  of  our  best  school-books  and  man- 
uals. And  this  is  particularly  true  with  regard  to  the 
Science  of  Language.  As  I  said  in  a  former  lecture, 
we  all  can  play  at  least  one  language,  many  in  these 
days  even  know  two  or  three.  We  therefore  possess 
the  facts ;  we  have  only  to  digest,  to  classify,  and  to 
try  to  understand  them. 


THIRD  LECTURE.  67 


THE  STUDY  OF  SANSKRIT. 

It  has  often  been  said  that  no  one  can  know  any- 
thing of  the  Science  of  Language  who  does  not  know 
Sanskrit,  and  that  that  is  enough  to  frighten  anybody 
away  from  its  study.  But,  first  of  all,  to  learn  San- 
skrit in  these  days  is  not  more  difficult  than  to  learn 
Greek  or  Latin.  Secondly,  though  a  knowledge  of 
Sanskrit  may  be  essential  to  every  student  who  wishes 
to  do  independent  work,  and  really  to  advance  the 
Science  of  Language,  it  is  not  so  for  those  who  simply 
wish  to  learn  what  has  been  hitherto  discovered.  It 
was  necessary  for  those  who  laid  the  foundations  of 
our  Science  to  study  as  many  languages  as  possible, 
in  order  to  find  out  their  general  relationship.  Men 
like  Bopp  and  Pott  had  to  acquire  some  knowledge  of 
Sanskrit,  Zend,  Gothic,  Lituanian,  Old  Slavonic,  Cel- 
tic, Armenian,  Georgian,  Ossetian,  Hebrew,  Arabic, 
and  Ethiopian,  to  say  nothing  of  languages  outside 
the  pale  of  the  Aryan  and  the  Semitic  families.  Their 
work  in  consequence  was  often  rough,  and  it  could 
hardly  have  been  otherwise.  When  that  rough  work 
had  been  done,  it  was  easy  enough  to  proceed  to 
more  minute  and  special  work.  But  it  seems  unfair, 
if  not  absurd,  to  find  faults  with  pioneers  like  Bopp 
and  Pott,  because  some  of  their  views  have  been 
proved  to  be  mistaken,  or  because  they  exaggerated 
the  importance  of  Sanskrit  for  a  successful  study  of 
Comparative  Philology.  Without  Sanskrit  we  should 
never  have  had  a  Science  of  Language ;  that  seems 
admitted  even  by  the  extreme  Left.  After  the  study 
of  Sanskrit  had  once  led  to  the  discovery  of  a  new 


68  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

world,  it  was  but  natural  that  the  land  should  be  di- 
vided and  sub-divided,  and  that  each  scholar  should 
cultivate  his  own  special  field.  Thus  Grimm  chose 
the  German  languages  for  his  special  domain,  Mick- 
losich  the  Slavonic,  Zeuss  the  Celtic,  Curtius  Greek, 
Corssen  Latin.  There  came,  in  fact,  a  reaction,  and 
we  were  told  at  last  that  Sanskrit  had  nothing  more 
to  teach  us.  Not  long  ago  Manchester,  which  has 
taken  the  lead  in  so  many  important  movements,  in- 
formed the  world  through  the  Times  that  the  long- 
planned  revolution  had  at  last  been  successful,  that 
Sanskrit  was  dethroned,  that  its  ministers  had  been 
guillotined,  and  a  new  claimant  had  been  installed, 
who  had  been  in  hiding  in  Finland.  The  Aryan  lan- 
guage was  a  mere  bastard  of  Finnish!  However,  when 
the  real  sources  of  this  information  had  been  discov- 
ered, the  panic  soon  came  to  an  end,  and  scholars 
worked  on  quietly  as  before,  each  in  his  own  smaller 
or  larger  field,  unconcerned  about  the  pronunciamentos 
of  the  Manchester  or  any  other  new  school.  If  the 
rebellion  meant  no  more  than  that  Sanskrit  had  been 
shown  to  be  the  elder  sister  only,  and  not  the  mother 
of  the  other  Aryan  languages,  then  I  am  afraid  that  I 
myself  must  be  counted  among  the  oldest  rebels.  If  it 
meant  that  the  students  of  Comparative  Philology 
could  henceforth  dispense  altogether  with  a  knowledge 
of  Sanskrit,  then  I  feel  sure  that  by  this  time  the  mis- 
take has  been  found  out,  and  Sanskrit  has  been  re- 
stored to  its  legitimate  throne,  as  prima  inter  pares 
among  the  members  of  the  Aryan  republic. 

It  used  to  be  said  for  a  time  that  even  the  A  B  C 
of  Sanskrit  was  extremely  deficient  and  misleading, 
and  that  the  system  of  the  Aryan  vowels  in  particular 
was  far  more  perfect  in  Greek  and  German  than  in 


THIRD  LECTURE.  69 

Sanskrit.  Sanskrit,  we  were  told,  has  written  signs 
for  the  three  short  vowels  only,  a,  i,  u,  not  for  short 
e  and  o.  It  was  declared  to  be  a  very  great  blemish 
that  the  two  vowels  e  and  o,  which  existed  in  the 
primitive  Aryan  speech,  had  been  lost  in  Sanskrit. 
If,  however,  they  were  lost  in  Sanskrit,  that,  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  logic,  would  seem  to  show  that  San- 
skrit also  formerly  possessed  them,  and  possibly  found 
that  it  could  do  without  them.  The  same  spirit  of  a 
wise  economy  may  be  observed  in  the  historical  pro- 
gress of  every  language. 

But  it  has  now  been  recognised  that,  from  a  gram- 
matical point  of  view,  the  Sanskrit  system  of  vowels  is 
really  far  more  true  than  that  of  Greek,  German,  or 
any  other  Aryan  language.  It  seems  to  me  altogether 
wrong,  whatever  the  highest  authorities  may  say  to 
the  contrary,  to  maintain  that  the  Aryan  languages 
began  with  five,  and  not  with  four  short  vowels. 

The  Aryan  languages  possessed  from  the  begin- 
ning no  more  than  the  well-known  four  fundamental 
vowels,  namely  /,  u,  the  invariable  a,  and  the  variable 
vowel,  which  changes  between  e,  o,  and  rarely  a. 
There  are  ever  so  many  roots  which  differ  from  each 
other  by  having  either  a,  /,  u,  or  that  fourth  variable 
sound ;  there  are  no  roots  that  differ  in  meaning  by 
having  either  a,  e,  or  o  as  their  radical.  Hence  (<*) 
£,  o  represent  one  fundamental  vowel  only  ;  they  are 
grammatical  variations  of  one  common  type.1 

If  we  represent  roots,  as  in  Hebrew,  by  their  con- 
sonants only,  then  we  have  in  the  Aryan  languages  a 
root  consisting  of  D  and  H.  With  the  radical  vowel 
/,  that  root  DIH  means  to  knead,  with  the  radical 
vowel  u  the  root  DUH  means  to  milk.  With  the 

1 1  use  a  for  the  invariable  a  ;  rt,  e,  o,  for  the  variable  vowel. 


JO  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

third  or  variable  vowel,  the  root  Da-H  means  to  burn, 
and  it  may  appear  in  certain  grammatical  derivations 
as  DaH,  DfH,  or  DoH.  We  never  find  a  root  DorH 
by  the  side  of  a  root  D«H,  or  a  root  DeH  by  the  side 
of  the  root  DoH.  What  we  find,  and  what  has  not 
yet  been  explained,  is  that  certain  roots  show  a  de- 
cided predilection  for  £  or  for  o. 

Here  then  we  see  how  right  Sanskrit  grammarians 
were  in  admitting  only  four,  and  not  five  fundamental 
vowels,  though  it  might  have  been  better  if  they  had 
in  writing  also  distinguished  between  the  invariable 
a  of  AG,  and  the  variable  a  of  BH^R.  Whether  the 
variable  vowel  was  in  Sanskrit  also  pronounced  differ- 
ently in  different  grammatical  forms,  we  cannot  tell, 
because  in  Sanskrit  that  variable  vowel  in  the  body 
of  a  word  is  never  written.  There  are  indications, 
however,  in  the  changes  produced  in  preceding  con- 
sonants, which  seem  to  speak  in  favor  of  such  a 
view. 

And  nowhere  has  the  importance  of  a  knowledge 
of  Sanskrit  been  shown  more  clearly  than  in  the  ex- 
planation of  these  very  vowel-changes,  in  Greek  and 
German.  Why  the  variable  vowel  appears  as  a,  f,  o 
or  disappears  altogether,  why  the  second  and  third 
radical  vowels  are  weakened  or  strengthened  in  the 
same  way,  remained  a  perfect  mystery,  till  the  key 
was  found  in  the  system  of  accentuation,  preserved  in 
the  Vedic  Sanskrit,  and  nowhere  else.1 

But  although  in  this,  as  in  many  other  cases, 
Sanskrit  betrays  more  of  the  ancient  secrets  of  lan- 
guage than  Greek  or  Latin  or  German,  there  is  plenty 

1  U  d  a  1 1  a  in  Sanskrit  means  high,  a  n  u  d  a  1 1  a  not-high.  Originally  the 
ndatta  syllable  represented  what  we  now  call  Hochstvfe,  the  anudatta 
Tiefstvfe,  at  least  during  the  period  when  accent  meant  as  yet  musical  pitch 
only. 


THIRD  LECTURE.  7 1 

of  work,  and  most  important  work,  to  be  done  in 
every  language,  nay  in  every  dialect,  for  which  we 
want  no  direct  aid  from  Sanskrit.  Some  of  the  most 
brilliant  discoveries  in  the  Science  of  Language  have 
lately  been  made  by  students  of  Teutonic  philology. 
The  work  begun  in  that  sphere  by  Grimm  and  Scherer 
has  been  carried  on  without  any  flagging  by  Fick, 
Schmidt,  Sievers,  Osthoff,  Collitz,  Brugmann  and 
others  in  Germany,  by  De  Saussure  in  France,  by 
Ascoli  and  Merlo  in  Italy.  The  same  work  has  been 
taken  up  with  renewed  ardor  in  England,  where  Ellis, 
Morris,  Sweet,  Skeat,  Napier,  Douse,  and  others  have 
done  most  excellent  work,  and  made  valuable  addi- 
tions to  our  inherited  stock  of  knowledge. 

Many  more  laborers,  however,  are  wanted  to  culti- 
vate this  field  of  English  scholarship.  Thousands,  as 
you  know,  have  come  forward  to  gather  honey  and 
bring  it  into  the  beehive  at  Oxford,  where  a  Diction- 
ary of  the  English  Language  is  prepared  which,  when 
finished,  need  not  fear  comparison  with  the  diction- 
aries of  either  Grimm  or  Littre'.  But  there  is  much 
more  work  to  be  done  in  which  other  thousands  might 
help,  such  as  collecting  spoken  dialects,  watching 
local  pronunciation,  gathering  old  proverbs,  writing 
down  with  phonetic  accuracy  popular  stories  and 
poems,  as  repeated  by  old  grannies  and  young  chil- 
dren. If  among  some  of  my  hearers  to-day  I  have  suc- 
ceeded in  raising  an  interest  in  language  in  general, 
and  in  kindling  a  love  for  their  own  language  in  par- 
ticular, and  if  that  interest  and  love  will  bear  fruit, 
however  small, — but  nothing  is  too  small  in  the  eyes 
of  a  conscientious  scholar, — then  I  shall  feel  amply 
rewarded  for  having  stayed  here  to  attend  your  Meet- 


SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


ing,  which,  I  hope,  may  henceforth  become  a  perma- 
nent institution  in  the  educational  system  of  our 
country. 


GENEALOGICAL   TABLE 

or 
THE    ARYAN    FAMILY    OF    LANGUAGES. 

SSi8™  North  Wwtern  Dinaion 


!     \i 


flii 
nl  t 


a 


I!    I 


i 


i  ll*" 


i  - —      f|f    , !•••• 

!    .- 3-*a....J *...• 

!ii -:;;;;;;-;;;: •ylijj! j-- 


MY  PREDECESSORS.1 


IN  writing  my  book,  On  the  Science  of  Thought^  my 
chief  object  was  to  collect  all  the  facts  which 
seemed  to  me  to  bear  on  the  identity  of  language  and 
thought.  I  sifted  them,  and  tried  to  show  in  what 
direction  their  evidence  pointed.  But,  as  I  imagined 
myself  as  addressing  a  very  small  special  jury,  it 
seemed  to  me  unnecessary,  and  almost  disrespectful, 
to  bring  any  pressure  to  bear  on  them,  except  the 
pressure  inherent  in  facts.  I  therefore  did  not  avail 
myself  as  fully  as  I  might  otherwise  have  done,  of  the 
many  witnesses  that  I  could  have  brought  into  court 
to  support  by  their  authority  the  truth  of  the  theory 
which  I  propounded.  I  mentioned,  indeed,  their 
names,  but  I  did  not  call  upon  them  to  speak  for  me 
or  for  themselves.  The  fact  is,  that  I  did  not  expect 
that  public  opinion  at  large  could,  at  the  present  mo- 
ment, be  very  much  interested  in  a  question  which 
had  been  discussed  many  times  before,  but  which,  as 
far  as  I  could  see,  was  by  nearly  all  living  philosophers, 

1  Reprinted  with  the  consent  of  publishers  and  author  from  the  Contempo- 
rary Review,  Vol.  LIV. 

2  The  Science  of  Thought,  Longmans  &  Co.,  1887.     Three  Introductory  Lec- 
tures on  the  Science  of  Thought,  delivered  at  the  Royal  Institution,  with  an 
Appendix,  which  contains  a  Correspondence  on  "Thought  Without  Words,' 
between  F.  Max  MQller,  Francis  Gallon,  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  George  J.  Ro- 
manes, and  others.     The  Open  Court  Pub.  Co.,  Chicago,  111.,  and  Longmans 
&  Co.,  London,  1888. 


y,  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

particularly  by  those  in  this  country,  answered  in  a 
direction  diametrically  opposed  to  that  which  I,  follow- 
ing the  lead  of  the  greatest  philosophers  of  antiquity, 
of  the  middle  ages,  and  of  more  modern  times,  con- 
sidered the  right  one.  I  know  how  long  I  myself  liv- 
ing under  the  influence  of  prevailing  systems  of  phi- 
losophy, had  hesitated  to  give  up  the  old  belief  that 
language  is  a  product  of  thought ;  that  thought  must 
always  come  first,  language  after ;  that  thought  is  in- 
dependent of  language,  and  that  the  Greeks  were 
great  bunglers  when  they  called  language  and  thought 
by  one  and  the  same  name,  Logos.  A  long  life,  de- 
voted to  the  study  of  philology  and  philosophy,  was 
necessary  before  I  could  free  myself  of  the  old  words 

that  is,  the  old  thoughts — and  cease  to  treat  language 

as  one  thing  and  thought  as  another.  Much  astro- 
nomical observation  was  required  before  people  could 
persuade  themselves  that  their  evening  star  was  the 
same  as  their  morning  star,1  and  much  linguistic  ob- 
servation will  have  to  be  performed  before  anybody 
will  see  clearly  that  our  language  is  really  our  thought 
and  our  thought  our  language. 

But  though  I  was  quite  prepared  that  the  verdict 
of  living  philosophers  would,  for  the  present  at  least, 
be  adverse  to  my  theory,  I  was  not  prepared  to  find 
nearly  all  my  critics  under  the  impression  that  this 
theory  of  the  identity  of  thought  and  language  was 
quite  a  novel  theory,  something  quite  unheard  of — in 
fact,  a  mere  paradox.  This  showed  the  same  want  of 
historical  knowledge  and  tact  which  surprised  so  many 
philosophers  in  Germany  and  France  at  the  time  of 
the  first  appearance  of  Darwin's  book  On  the  Origin 
of  Species.  Most  of  the  leading  reviews  in  England 

I  See,  however,  Hibbert  Lectures,  by  Sayce,  pp.  258,  264. 


MY  PREDECESSORS.  75 

seemed  to  consider  the  theory  of  evolution  as  some- 
thing quite  novel,  as  a  kind  of  scientific  heresy,  and 
they  held  Darwin  personally  responsible  for  it,  whether 
for  good  or  for  evil.  Darwin  himself  had  at  last  to 
protest  against  this  misapprehension,  to  point  out  the 
long  succession  of  the  advocates  of  evolution,  from 
Lucretius  to  Lamarck  and  Oken,  and  to  claim  for 
himself  what  he  really  cared  for,  a  legitimate  place  in 
the  historical  evolution  of  the  theory  of  evolution. 

In  Germany  and  France  the  doctrine  of  the  iden- 
tity of  language  and  thought  has  at  once  been  recog- 
nised as  an  old  friend,  as  a  theory  that  had  almost 
been  battered  to  pieces  in  former  historical  conflicts, 
but  which,  like  the  theory  of  evolution,  might  well 
claim  for  itself  a  new  hearing  on  account  of  the  im- 
mense accumulation  of  new  material,  chiefly  due  to 
the  study  of  the  Science  of  Language  during  the  pres- 
ent and  the  past  generations.  I  myself,  so  far  from 
pretending  to  propound  a  new  philosophy,  thought  it 
right  to  point  out  how  some  of  the  greatest  philoso- 
phers have  held  to  the  same  theory,  though  without 
being  able  to  support  it  by  the  important  evidence 
supplied  by  the  study  of  comparative  philology,  or  to 
perceive  quite  clearly  all  the  consequences  which  must 
flow  from  it.  It  seemed  certainly  strange  that  a  theory 
which  was,  to  mention  more  recent  philosophers  only, 
accepted  without  any  misgivings  by  such  men  as  Her- 
der,1 Schleiermacher,  W.  von  Humboldt,  Schelling, 
and  Hegel,  in  Germany;  by  Hobbes,  Archbishop 
Whately,  and  Mansel,  in  England ;  by  Abelard,  De 
Bonald,  De  Maistre,  and  Taine,  in  France;  and  by 
Rosmini  in  Italy,  should  have  been  treated  as  a  com- 
plete novelty,  or  as  a  mere  philological  mare's  nest, 

I  Science  of  Thought,  pp.  30,  129. 


76  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

by  men  who  stand  in  the  foremost  ranks  of  philosophers 
in  England.  What  should  we  say  if  our  best  scien- 
tific reviews  shrank  from  the  theory  of  the  homogeneity 
of  light,  heat,  and  magnetism  as  an  unheard-of  nov- 
elty, or  as  a  mere  scientific  paradox?  But  such  has 
nevertheless  been  the  attitude  of  some  of  the  best  phil- 
osophical journals  in  England,  in  discussing,  or  rather 
in  declining  to  discuss,  the  identity  of  language  and 
thought,  which  in  my  Science  of  Thought  I  tried  to 
support,  chiefly  by  the  evidence  brought  together  dur- 
ing the  last  fifty  years  by  the  Science  of  Language. 

It  may  be  useful,  therefore,  to  look  back,  in  order 
to  see  what  form  our  problem  had  assumed  before  the 
Science  of  Language  had  thrown  new  light  upon  it. 
In  France  this  problem  of  the  identity  of  language 
and  thought  has  always  remained  on  the  order  of  the 
day.  The  controversy  between  Nominalism  and  Re- 
alism has  left  there  a  far  deeper  impression  than  in 
England,  and  it  has  not  been  forgotten  that  one  of 
the  principal  tenets  of  the  Nominalists  was  that  our 
knowledge  of  universals  consisted  entirely  in  words. 
It  was  Condillac  (1715-1780)  and  his  school  in  the 
last  century  who  gave  new  life  to  this  old  controversy, 
though  his  well-known  dictum,  Nous  ne  pensons  qu'avec 
les  mots,  went  certainly  beyond  the  point  which  had 
been  reached  by  the  older  Nominalists.1  The  question 
is  what  he  meant  by  penser,  and  if  penser  meant,  as  it 
does  according  to  Condillac,  no  more  than  sentir,  it 
would  not  be  difficult  to  prove  that  not  only  sensation, 
but  also  imagination,  can  take  place  without  language. 

1 "  Qu'est  ce  au  fond  que  la  realitg  qu'une  idee  abstraite  et  generate  a 
dans  notre  esprit  ?  Ce  n'est  qu'un  nom  .  .  .  Les  idees  abstraites  ne  sont  done 
que  des  denominations  ...  Si  nous  n'avions  point  de  denominations,  nous 
n'aurions  point  d'idees  abstraites,  nous  n'aurions  ni  genres  ni  especes,  nous 
ne  pourrions  raisonner  sur  rien."  (Condiliac,  Logique,  lime,  partie,  Chap.  V.) 


MY    PREDECESSORS.  77 

We  must  define  what  we  mean  by  thought  before  we 
can  understand  its  identity  with  language.  It  was 
Rousseau  (1712-1778)  who  at  once  perceived  the  weak 
point  in  Condillac's  statement.  He  saw  that,  if  we 
used  the  name  of  thought  for  all  mental  work,  we 
ought  to  distinguish  between  at  least  two  kinds  of 
thought,  thought  in  images,  and  thought  in  words. 
As  a  poet  and  as  a  dreamer  Rousseau  was  naturally 
aware  how  often  we  are  satisfied  with  images ;  that  is 
to  say,  how  often  we  indulge  in  mere  imagination  and 
call  it  thinking.  And  though  it  is  quite  true  that  with 
us  who  are  so  saturated  with  language  there  are  few 
images  which  on  closer  examination  turn  out  to  be 
really  anonymous,  yet  we  cannot  deny  the  possibility 
of  such  mental  activity,  and  are  bound  to  admit  it, 
particularly  in  the  earlier  periods  of  the  development 
of  the  human  mind.  It  is  this  kind  of  thought  which 
has  been  often  claimed  for  animals  also.1  Rousseau 
therefore  remarks  very  justly,  Lorsque  r imagination  s'ar- 
rete,  r  esprit  ne  marche  qu'a  Paide  du  discours,  "When 
imagination  stops,  the  mind  does  not  advance,  except 
by  means  of  language."2 

But,  even  supposing  that  our  modern  philosophers 
should  treat  Condillac  and  Rousseau  as  ancient  and 
forgotten  worthies,  surely  they  must  have  heard  of 

1  De  Bonald,  De  POrigine  du  Langage,  p.  67  :    "  Les  brutes,  qui  6prouvent 
les  memes  besoins,  recoivent  aussi  les  images  des  objets  que  1'instinct  de 
leur  conservation  les  porte  a  fuir  ou  a  chercher,  et  n'ont  besoin  de  langage. 
L' enfant,  qui  ne  parle  pas  encore,  le  muet  qui  ne  parlera  jamais,  se  font  aussi 
des  images  des  choses  sensibles,  et  la  parole  necessaire  pour  la  vie  morale  et 
ideale,  ne  Test  pas  du  tout  a  la  vie  physique." 

2  De  Bonald,  loc.  cit.  ,p.  65,  remarks  :  "  Ce  qui  veut  dire  qu1  on  ne  peut  pen 
ser  qu'au  moyen  de  paroles,  lorsqu'on  ne  pense  pas  au  moyen  d'images.' 
Haller  expressed  almost  the  same  idea,  when  he  said  :     "  Ita  assuevit  anima 
signis  uti,  ut  mera  per  signa  cogitet  ac  sonorum  vestigia  sola  omnium  rerum 
repraesentationes    animae    otterant,   rarioribus    exemplis   exceptis,   quando 
affectus  aliquis  imaginem  ipsam  revocat." 


78  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

Dugald  Stewart  in  Scotland  (i  753-1828),  of  De  Bonald 
(1754-1840)  and  De  Maistre  (1754-1821)  in  France. 
Now,  Dugald  Stewart  was  not  ashamed  to  teach  what 
the  Nominalists  had  taught  before  him — namely,  that, 
for  the  purpose  of  thinking  three  things  are  necessary: 
universalia,  genera,  and  words.  If  Dugald  Stewart  had 
not  persuaded  himself  that  Sanskrit  was  a  mere  forgery 
of  the  Brahmans,  he  might  have  learned  a  new  lesson 
— namely,  that  all  our  words,  even  those  which  we 
call  singular,  are  derived  from  general  concepts,  in 
so  far  as  they  must  be  traced  back  to  roots  embodying 
general  concepts.  This  discovery,  however,  was  re- 
served for  later  comers.  In  the  meantime,  men  like 
De  Bonald  and  De  Maistre  in  France  did  not  allow 
the  old  argument  to  sleep.  But  curiously  enough, 
while  formerly  the  idea  of  the  identity  of  thought  and 
language  was  generally  defended  by  philosophers  of 
the  type  of  Hobbes,  by  the  supporters  of  sensualistic 
theories  who  derive  all  our  knowledge  from  the  im- 
pressions of  the  senses  and  their  spontaneous  associa- 
tions, we  have  in  De  Bonald  and  De  Maistre  men  of 
the  very  opposite  stamp — orthodox,  almost  mystic 
philosophers,  who  nevertheless  make  the  identity  of 
thought  and  language  the  watchword  of  their  philos- 
ophy. It  is  true  that  even  Bossuet  (1627-1704)  in- 
clined in  the  same  direction.  In  his  famous  treatise, 
De  la  Connaissance  de  Dicu  et  de  soi-meme,  he  allows 
that  we  can  never,  or,  with  the  usual  proviso  of  weak- 
kneed  philosophers,  hardly  ever,  think  of  anything 
without  its  name  presenting  itself  to  us.  But  De 
Bonald  went  far  beyond  this,  as  will  be  seen  from  the 
following  extracts  r1 — 

1  (Euvres  de  M.  de  Bonald,  Recherches  riiilosophigues  sur  les  Premiers  Ob- 
jets  des  Connaissances  Morales.     Paris.     1858. 


MY  PREDECESSORS.  79 

In  his  treatise  on  the  origin  of  language  he  says : 
"There  was  geometry  in  the  world  before  Newton, 
and  philosophy  before  Descartes,  but  before  language 
there  was  absolutely  nothing  but  bodies  and  their  im- 
ages, because  language  is  the  necessary  instrument  of 
every  intellectual  operation — nay,  the  means  of  every 
moral  existence."1  He  puts  the  same  idea  into  more 
powerful,  though  at  first  sight  somewhat  perplexing 
language,  when  he  says  :  "  Man  thinks  his  word  before 
he  speaks  his  thought,  or,  in  other  words,  man  cannot 
speak  his  thought  without  thinking  his  word."2 

De  Maistre,  who  belongs  to  the  same  school  as  De 
Bonald,  and  whose  ultimate  conclusions  I  should  feel 
most  unwilling  to  adopt,  shows,  nevertheless,  the  same 
clear  insight  into  the  nature  of  language.  Thus  he 
writes:  "The  question  of  the  origin  of  ideas  is  the 
same  as  the  question  of  the  origin  of  language ;  for 
thought  and  language  are  only  two  magnificent  syno- 
nyms. Our  intellect  cannot  think  nor  know  that  it 
thinks  without  speaking,  because  it  must  say,  '  I 
know.'  "3 

And  again:  "It  is  absolutely  the  same  thing 
whether  one  asks  the  definition,  the  essence,  or  the 
name  of  an  object!4.  .  .  In  one  word,  there  is  no 
word  which  does  not  represent  an  idea,  and  which  is 
not  really  as  correct  and  as  true  as  the  idea,  because 
thought  and  language  do  not  differ  essentially,  but 
represent  the  same  act  of  the  mind,  speaking  either 
to  himself  or  to  others."5 

ILoc.cit.,  p.  73. 

SLoc.  eft.,  p.  64  :    "  L'homme  pense  sa  parole  avant  de  parler  sa  pens^e; 
ou  autrement,  1'homme  ne  peut  parler  sa  pensee  sans  Denser  sa  parole." 
SSoirles  de  St.  Pttersbotirg,  I.,  p.  75. 
ILoc.  cit.,  I.,  p.  135. 
SLoc.  cit.,  I.,  p.  131. 


^8o  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

I  say  once  more  that  I  am  the  last  person  to  follow 
these  French  philosophers  to  their  last  conclusions. 
Their  object  is  to  show  that  language,  being  what  it 
is,  cannot  have  been  a  human  invention,  but  must 
have  been  a  divine  revelation.1  I  quote  them  here  as 
representative  men  only,  and  as  showing  how  familiar 
the  idea  of  the  identity  of  thought  and  language  was 
on  the  Continent  during  the  first  half  of  our  century — 
an  idea  v/hich,  by  some  of  the  most  prominent  philos- 
ophers in  England,  has  been  treated  as  an  unheard- 
of  paradox. 

Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  De  Bonald,  and  De 
Maistre  too,  are  ancient  history  ;  that  the  first  half  of 
this  century  was  a  mistake,  and  that  true  and  positive 
philosophy  dates  only  from  the  second  half  of  our 
century.  But  even  then,  those  who  wish  to  take  part 
in  the  discussion  of  the  great  problems  of  philosophy 
ought  to  know  that  the  question  of  the  identity  of 
language  and  thought  has  never  to  the  present  day 
been  neglected  by  the  leading  philosophers  of  Ger- 
many and  France.  Let  us  take  one,  who  has  not  only 
proved  himself  most  intimately  acquainted  with  the 
most  recent  schools  of  philosophical  thought  in  Eng- 
land, but  has  often  been  claimed  as  a  disciple  of  Stuart 
Mill — let  us  take  M.  Taine,  and  what  do  we  find  in 
his  great  work,  De  V Intelligence,  first  published  in 
1870?  Without  the  slightest  hesitation,  without  any 

1"  Si  1'expression  est  necessaire,  non-seulement  a  la  production  de  1'idee 
ou  a  sa  revelation  exterieure,  mais  encore  a  sa  conception  dans  notre  propre 
esprit;  c'est-a-dire,  si  1'idee  ne  peut  etre  presente  a  notre  esprit  ni  presente 
1 1'esprit  des  antres  que  par  la  parole  orale  ou  ecrite  :  le  langage  cst  necessaire, 
ou  tel  que  la  soctete'  n'a  pu,  dans  aucun  temps,  exister  sans  le  langage,  pas 
plus  que  1' homme  n'a  pu  exister  horsde  la  societe.  L'homme  n'a  done  pas 
invente  le  langage  ....  La  necessite  de  la  revelation  primitive  du  langage  a 
etc  defendue  dans  /' Encyclopedic  par  le  savant  et  vertueux  Beauzee.  Charles 
Bonnet  et  Hugh  Blair  entrent  dans  le  meme  sentiment." — DE  BONALD,  loc.  cit., 
p.  199. 


MY   PREDECESSORS.  8l 

fear  that  what  he  says  could  sound  strange  to  well- 
schooled  philosophical  ears,  or  be  taken  for  mere  par- 
adox even  by  the  outside  public,  he  writes  :a — 

"What  we  call  a  general  idea  is  nothing  but  a 
name ;  not  the  simple  sound  which  vibrates  in  the  air 
and  sets  our  ears  in  motion,  nor  the  assemblage  of 
letters  which  blacken  the  paper  and  touch  our  eyes — 
not  even  these  letters  apprehended  mentally,  or  the 
sound  of  them  mentally  rehearsed,  but  that  sound  and 
those  letters  endowed,  as  we  perceive  or  imagine  them, 
with  a  twofold  character,  first  of  producing  in  us  the 
images  of  individuals  belonging  to  a  certain  class,  and 
of  these  individuals  only ;  secondly,  of  reappearing 
every  time  when  an  individual  of  that  class,  and  only 
when  an  individual  of  that  same  class,  presents  itself 
to  our  memory  or  our  perception." 

And  again  :2 — 

"Hence  arise  curious  illusions.  We  believe  we 
possess,  besides  our  general  words,  general  ideas;  we 
distinguish  between  the  idea  and  the  word ;  the  idea 
seems  to  us  a  separate  act,  the  word  being  an  auxiliary 
only.  We  actually  compare  the  idea  and  the  image, 
and  we  say  that  the  idea  performs  in  another  sphere 
the  same  office  in  presenting  to  us  general  objects 
which  the  image  performs  in  presenting  to  us  individ- 
uals .  .  .  Such  is  the  first  of  our  psychological  illu- 
sions, and  what  we  call  our  consciousness  swarms 
with  them.  The  false  theories  arising  from  them  are 
as  complicated  as  they  are  numerous.  They  obstruct 
all  science,  and  only  when  they  shall  have  been  swept 
away  will  science  become  simple  again." 

I  could  go  on  quoting  passage  after  passage  from 

ILoc.  eft.,  I.,  p.  35. 
'    ZLoc.  cit.,  I.,  p.  66. 


82  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

M.  Taine's  work,  and  I  may  say,  with  regard  to  him 
too,  that,  though  accepting  his  facts,  I  by  no  means 
accept  all  the  conclusions  he  draws  from  them.  I 
agree  with  him  that  word  and  idea  are  but  two  names 
for  the  same  thing.  I  agree  with  him,  when  he,  like 
Locke,  shows  the  impossibility  of  animals  ever  reach- 
ing the  intellectual  level  of  language,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  they  cannot  reach  the  level  of  general 
ideas.  But  I  differ  from  him  when  he  thinks  that  the 
origin  of  language  and  the  original  formation  of  words 
can  be  explained  by  watching  the  way  in  which  a  child 
of  the  present  day  acquires  the  use  of  a  language  ready 
made,  though  even  here  our  opinions  are  by  no  means 
so  far  apart  as  he  imagines.  We  are  concerned  with 
different  problems,  but  we  agree,  at  all  events,  as  to 
the  manner  in  which  these  problems  ought  to  be 
treated,  not  by  mere  assertion  and  counter-assertion, 
but  by  a  comprehensive  study  of  facts,  and  by  a  care- 
ful examination  of  the  opinions  of  those  who  came 
before  us. 

The  unhistorical  treatment  of  philosophy,  for  which 
some  English  philosophers  have  been  of  late  fre- 
quently, and,  I  think,  justly,  reprehended,  entails  far 
more  serious  consequences  than  might  be  imagined. 
I  admit  it  gives  a  certain  freshness  and  liveliness  to 
philosophical  discussions.  Completely  new  ideas,  or 
ideas  supposed  to  be  new,  excite,  no  doubt,  greater 
enthusiasm,  and  likewise  greater  surprise  and  indig- 
nation. But  life,  nay,  even  history,  would  be  too  short, 
if  we  were  always  to  begin  again  where  Thales,  Aris- 
totle, or  Descartes  began,  or  if  the  well-known  results 
of  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  were  published  to 
the  world  as  the  most  recent  discoveries  of  synthetic 
philosophy. 


MY   PREDECESSORS.  83 

Another  inconvenience  arising  from  this  unhistori- 
cal  treatment  of  philosophical  questions  is  felt  even 
more  acutely — namely,  that  in  defending  an  old  theory 
by  new  arguments  we  are  often  supposed  to  be  plead- 
ing our  own  cause.  Darwin,  particularly  in  his  earlier 
books,  speaks  of  the  cause  of  evolution,  not  as  if  it 
were  anything  personal  to  himself,  but  as  a  trust 
handed  down  to  him,  almost  as  an  heirloom  of  his 
family ;  anyhow,  as  a  valuable  inheritance  dating  from 
the  earliest  days  of  awakening  physical  and  philosoph- 
ical inquiry.  In  his  later  books  he  becomes  more  and 
more  self-conscious,  and  seems  restrained  from  apply- 
ing that  rapturous  language  to  the  results  obtained 
by  the  theory  of  evolution  which  those  who  follow  him 
feel  perfectly  justified  in  applying  to  his  and  their 
own  labors.  I  have  been  blamed  for  speaking  with 
unconcealed  rapture  of  the  theory  of  the  identity  of 
language  and  thought,  and  I  certainly  should  feel  that 
I  deserved  blame  if  this  theory  had  really  been  of  my 
own  invention.  But,  knowing  how  many  of  the  most 
authoritative  philosophers  had  held  the  same  views,  I 
felt  at  perfect  liberty  to  speak  of  it,  as  I  did,  as  the 
most  important  philosophical  truth,  in  fact,  as  the 
only  solid  foundation  of  all  philosophy. 

I  also  took  it  for  granted,  though  it  seems  I  ought 
not  to  have  done  so,  that  the  misunderstandings  which 
had  formerly  beset  this  theory,  and  had  been  demol- 
ished again  and  again,  would  not  be  repeated  with  the 
innocent  conviction  that  they  had  never  been  thought 
of  before. 

Of  course,  such  an  expression  as  identity  of  thought 
and  language  can  be  cavilled  at.  If  Kant  is  right,  no 
two  things  in  space  and  time  can  ever  be  identical, 
and  if  people  really  take  identical  in  that  sense,  the 


84.  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

sooner  the  word  is  altogether  superseded  the  better. 
When  we  say  that  language  and  thought  are  identical, 
we  mean  that  they  are  two  names  of  the  same  thing 
under  two  aspects.  There  is  a  very  useful  term  in 
Sanskrit  philosophy,  "  apr/thagbhava "  ("the  not 
being  able  to  exist  apart "),  and  it  is  this,  the  impossi- 
bility of  thought  existing  apart  from  language,  or  lan- 
guage from  thought,  which  we  mean  when  we  call  the 
two  identical.  We  can  distinguish  for  our  own  pur- 
poses, and  these  purposes  are  perfectly  legitimate,  be- 
tween the  sound  and  the  meaning  of  a  word,  just  as  we 
can  distinguish  between  the  pitch  and  the  timbre  of 
our  voice.  But  though  we  can  distinguish,  we  can- 
not separate  the  two.  We  cannot  have  timbre  with- 
out pitch,  nor  pitch  without  timbre  ;  neither  can  we 
have  words  without  thought,  nor  thought  without 
words.  There  never  was  on  one  side  a  collection 
of  vocables,  mere  flatus  vocis,  and  on  the  other  a 
collection  of  concepts.  The  two  were  always  one 
and  indivisible,  but  not  one  and  indistinguishable. 
We  can  certainly  distinguish  the  sound  of  a  word  from 
its  meaning,  but  we  must  not  expect  to  meet  with 
meanings  walking  about  in  broad  daylight  as  disem- 
bodied ghosts,  or  with  sounds  floating  through  the  air, 
like  so  many  Undines  in  search  of  a  soul.  The  two 
were  not  two,  but  were  one  from  the  beginning,  and 
the  TtpcoTov  ifievdos  lies  in  this  attempted  divorce  be- 
tween sound  and  meaning. 

After  words  have  been  formed,  as  embodied 
thoughts,  no  doubt  it  is  possible  to  imitate  and  re- 
peat their  sound  without  knowing  their  meaning.  We 
have  only  to  speak  English  to  a  Chinaman,  and  we 
shall  see  that  what  to  us  is  English  is  to  him  mere 
sound  and  jabber.  It  is  no  longer  language,  because 


MY  PREDECESSORS.  85 

it  is  of  the  essence  of  language  to  be  sound  and  mean- 
ing at  the  same  time. 

But  then  it  is  asked — Is  our  thinking  always 
speaking?  I  say,  yes  it  is,  if  only  we  take  speaking 
in  its  proper  sense.  But  if  we  mean  by  speaking  the 
mere  vibrations  of  our  vocal  chords,  then  thinking  is 
not  always  speaking,  because  we  can  suppress  these 
vibrations,  and  yet  keep  in  our  memory  the  sound 
which  they  were  meant  to  produce,  and  the  meaning 
which  that  sound  was  meant  to  convey.  It  is  this 
speaking  without  voice  which  has  come  to  be  called 
thinking,  while  thinking  aloud  has  monopolised  the 
name  of  speaking.  The  true  definition,  in  fact,  of 
thinking,  as  commonly  understood,  is  speaking  minus 
voice.  And  as  this  kind  of  thinking  is  that  which  is 
most  commonly  used  for  intense  intellectual  work, 
people  have  become  so  proud  of  it  that  they  cannot 
bear  to  see  it  what  they  call  degraded  to  mere  speak- 
ing without  voice.  Still  so  it  is,  as  every  one  can  dis- 
cover for  himself,  if  he  will  only  ask  himself  at  any 
moment  what  he  is  or  has  been  thinking  about.  He 
can  answer  this  question  to  himself  and  to  others  in 
words  only.  Nor  is  there  anything  degrading  in  this, 
and,  at  all  events,  the  greatest  philosophical  thinkers, 
the  Greeks,  did  not  think  so,  or  say  so,  for  they  were 
satisfied  with  one  and  the  same  word  for  thought  and 
speech. 

Nor  do  we  really,  when  we  examine  ourselves 
carefully,  ever  detect  ourselves  as  thinking  only,  or  as 
thinking  in  the  abstract.  How  often  have  I  been 
asked,  not  whether  I  think  without  words,  but  whether 
I  think  in  English  or  in  German.  What  does  that 
mean  ?  It  means,  whether  I  speak  to  myself  in  Eng- 
lish or  in  German,  and  no  more.  The  idea  that  I 


86  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

could  speak  to  myself  in  no  language  at  all  is  too  ab- 
surd to  be  even  suggested. 

The  results  which  the  Science  of  Language  has  ar- 
rived at,  and  which  are  by  no  means  so  startling  as 
has  been  supposed,  are  shortly  these  : — We  have  sen- 
sations without  language,  and  some  of  these  sensa- 
tions may  produce  in  men,  as  well  as  in  animals,  in- 
voluntary cries. 

We  have  perceptions,  or  images  without  language, 
and  some  of  these  may  be  accompanied  by  gestures 
or  signs,  such  gestures  or  signs  being  often  intelli- 
gible to  others  belonging  to  the  same  kind. 

We  have  concepts,  but  these  we  can  never  have 
without  words,  because  it  is  the  word  which  embodies 
originally  one  feature  only  of  the  whole  image,  and 
afterwards  others,  and  thus  supplies  what  we  call  ab- 
stract concepts,  to  which  nothing  can  ever  respond  in 
imagination,  nothing  in  sensation,  nothing  in  nature. 

Here  it  is  where  the  Science  of  Language  has  sup- 
plied the  historical  proof  of  what  would  otherwise 
have  remained  a  mere  postulate.  We  know,  as  a  fact, 
that  about  eight  hundred  roots  will  account  for  nearly 
the  whole  wealth  of  the  Sanskrit  Dictionary.  We  can 
account  for  these  roots  in  different  ways,  the  most  un- 
objectionable being  that  suggested  by  Noire,  that  they 
were  originally  the  clamor  concomitans  of  the  conscious 
acts  of  men.  Now,  let  us  take  an  instance.  Man  would 
have  received  the  sensation  of  brightness  from  the 
stars  in  the  sky,  and  it  is  possible,  at  least  I  should 
not  like  to  deny  it,  th'at  animals  too  might  receive  the 
same  sensation.  After  a  time,  when  the  same  starry 
sky  was  observed  night  after  night,  and  year  after  year, 
the  stars  as  bright  points  would  be  remembered,  and 
would  leave  an  image  of  separate  sparkling  points. 


MY   PREDECESSORS.  87 

nay,  it  may  be,  of  certain  very  prominent  constella- 
tions in  our  memory.  Nor  is  there  any  reason  to 
doubt  that,  without  any  language,  the  mere  image  of 
certain  constellations  appearing  on  the  sky  might  from 
the  earliest  times  have  evoked  the  images  of  concom- 
itant events,  such  as  the  approach  of  cold  weather, 
or  the  return  of  spring,  in  the  minds  of  our  most  sav- 
age ancestors. 

But  with  all  that,  there  was  as  yet  no  word,  and, 
in  consequence,  no  concept  of  a  star.  What  we  call 
stars,  as  different  from  the  sky  to  which  they  seem 
attached,  as  different  also  from  sun  and  moon,  were 
as  yet  bright  images  only. 

Now,  the  next  decisive  step  was  this.  The  Aryan 
man  possessed  what  we  call  roots,  sounds  which  had 
often  been  used  while  he  and  his  friends  were  engaged 
in  acts  of  scattering,  dispersing,  strewing.  One  of 
these  sounds  may  have  been  STAR.  We  find  it  in  Latin, 
ster-no  and  sir  amen ;  in  Greek,  ffrop-fvvvj^i ;  in  Gothic, 
stranja  ;  English,  to  strew,  and  its  many  derivatives, 
In  all  these  words,  the  root,  we  say,  is  STAR,  though 
we  need  not  assert  that  such  a  root  ever  existed  by 
itself  before  it  was  realised  in  all  the  words  which 
sprang  from  it.  One  of  the  features  of  the  bright 
sparkling  points  in  heaven  was  their  scattering  or 
strewing  sprays  of  light.  By  means  of  the  root  STAR 
this  one  feature  was  abstracted  from  the  rest  of  the 
image,  and  the  stars  were  thus  at  the  same  time  called 
and  conceived  as  strewers :  in  Sanskrit,  star-as ;  in 
Greek,  affrfp-es ;  in  Latin,  stellae,  i.  e.  sterulae ;  in 
English,  stars. 

This  word  star  was  not  meant  for  any  single  star, 
it  did  not  correspond  to  a  sensation,  nor  to  any  vague 
image  or  recollection  of  stars  ;  it  was  a  name  repre- 


88  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

senting  one  abstract  feature  of  the  stars,  namely,  their 
scattering  of  light  in  a  dark  night.  It  was  man's  own 
creation,  and  corresponded  to  nothing  in  nature,  un- 
less it  was  predicated  afterwards  of  this  or  that  par- 
ticular star.  It  was  so  general,  in  fact,  that,  as  soon 
as  special  stars  had  to  be  named,  new  determining  or 
individualising  names  became  necessary.  When  it 
was  observed  that  certain  stars  always  retained  their 
place,  while  others  travelled  about,  the  former  were 
named  fixed  stars,  the  latter  travellers  or  planets,1  till 
at  last  every  prominent  star  received  some  kind  of 
name,  that  is  to  say,  was  known  and  called  as  different 
from  all  the  rest. 

We  see  the  same  process  everywhere,  though  it  is 
not  always  possible  to  discover  with  perfect  certainty 
what  specific  features  in  the  objects  of  nature  were 
selected  for  the  purpose  of  knowing  and  naming  them, 
or,  in  other  words,  from  what  root  their  names  were 
derived.  Let  us  examine  the  name  of  tree.  Here  it  is 
quite  clear  that  the  most  primitive  savage  must  have 
had  the  sensation  produced  by  trees  growing  up  all 
around  him,  and  giving  him  shelter  against  the  sun, 
possibly  supplying  food  also  to  appease  his  hunger. 
Let  us  suppose  that  that  sensation  was  on  a  level  with 
the  sensation  which  animals  also  receive  from  trees. 
I  do  not  think  it  was,  but  I  am  willing  to  grant  it  for 
argument's  sake.  The  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
trees  which  made  an  impression  on  the  eyes  of  these 
savages  must  soon  have  become  indistinguishable,  and 
left  an  image  in  the  memory  of  a  very  general  and  in- 
distinct character.  Some  philosophers  maintain  that 
animals  also  have  these  blurred  images,  and  that  they 

1  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  I.,  p.  8. 


MY  PREDECESSORS.  89 

would  mistake  a  post  for  a  tree.  Again,  for  argument's 
sake,  I  do  not  mean  to  contest  it. 

But  now  comes  a  new  step.  Men,  and  men  alone, 
in  the  earliest  stages  of  their  life  on  earth,  began  to 
take  hold  of  certain  trees,  tear  off  their  bark,  hollow 
out  their  stems,  and  use  these  in  the  end  for  making 
beds,  boats,  and  tables,  and  for  other  purposes.  Con- 
comitant and  significative  of  this  act  of  tearing  off  the 
bark  of  trees,  the  Aryan  people  had  a  root  DAR  ;  in 
Greek,  ddpoo;  in  English,  to  tear.  Being  chiefly  in- 
terested in  trees  because-  they  could  thus  be  peeled 
and  shaped  and  rendered  useful,  they  called  a  tree  in 
Sanskrit  dru ;  in  Greek,  6pvS;  in  Gothic,  triu ;  in 
English,  tree.  This  was  but  one  out  of  many  names 
that  could  be  applied  to  trees  for  various  reasons, 
more  or  less  important  in  the  eyes  of  the  Aryan  sav- 
ages ;  and  here,  even  for  the  sake  of  argument,  I  can- 
not bring  myself  to  admit  that  any  animal  could  have 
done  the  same.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  there  is 
really  nothing  in  nature  corresponding  to  tree.  If  it 
simply  meant  what  could  be  shaped,  there  are  hun- 
dreds of  things  that  can  in  various  ways  be  shaped. 
If  it  was  confined  to  trees,  there  are  again  hundreds 
of  trees,  oaks,  beeches,  fir-trees,  etc.;  but  no  human 
eye  has  ever  seen  a  tree,  nor  could  any  artist  give  us 
an  idea  of  what  a  tree  may  be  as  a  mere  phantasma  in 
the  mind  of  man  or  animal.1 

If  all  this  is  true,  it  follows  that  no  concept,  not 
even  the  concept  of  so  simple  an  object  as  a  tree,  was 
possible  without  a  name.  It  was  by  being  named, 
that  is,  by  having  one  of  its  prominent  features  sin- 
gled out  or  abstracted,  and  brought  under  the  root 
DAR,  to  tear,  that  the  blurred  image,  left  on  the  mem- 

ITaine,  De  r Intelligence,  I.,  p.  27. 


go  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

ory  after  repeated  sensations,  became  known,  became 
definite,  received  a  handle  for  the  purposes  of  thought 
and  speech.  And  what  was  the  result?  The  result 
was  that  with  the  name  there  arose  in  the  mind,  not  a 
sensation,  not  an  image — for  think  what  such  an  image 
would  have  been — but  what  we  call  a  concept,  when 
we  speak  to  ourselves  without  vibrations  of  the  vocal 
chords,  but  what  is  called  a  word  when  uttered  aloud. 
If  we  distinguish,  therefore,  at  all  between  concepts 
and  words,  we  are  bound  to  say  that  concepts  are  due 
to  words,  they  are  words  •  minus  sound,  and  not,  as 
most  philosophers  will  have  it,  that  words  are  due  to 
concepts,  that  they  are  concepts ///AT  sound.  It  is  only 
because  to  think  aloud  is  to  speak  that  to  speak  sotto 
voce  may  be  called  to  think.  All  this  was  perfectly 
known,  as  far  as  the  general  principle  is  concerned. 
I  believe  that  even  Berkeley's  ingenious  views  of  gen- 
eral ideas  might  easily  be  translated  into  our  language. 
He  maintains  that  general  ideas  do  not  exist  at  all; 
so  do  we.  He  then  proceeds  to  say  that  what  we  call 
general  ideas  are  particular  ideas  with  a  word  attached 
to  them.  So  do  we,1  only  that  we  have  learned  how 
this  process  took  place.  It  could  not  be  done  by  tak- 
ing a  sound  at  random  and  attaching  it  to  a  particular 
idea,  for  the  simple  reason  that  there  were  no  such 
sounds  in  the  market.  But  if  Berkeley  had  known 
the  results  of  the  Science  of  Language,  he  would,  I 
believe,  have  been  perfectly  satisfied  with  the  process, 
as  described  before,  of  bringing  one  feature  of  the  par- 
ticular idea  under  a  root,  and  thus  raising  that  particu- 
lar into  a  general  idea  at  the  same  time  that  the  root 
was  raised  into  a  word. 

We  could  come  to  an  understanding  with  Locke 

I  Science  of  Thought,  p.  259. 


MY    PREDECESSORS.  Qt 

also,  when  he  says  that  "words  become  general  by 
being  made  the  signs  of  general  ideas!"1  if  only  he 
could  be  made  to  see  that  the  same  object  which  he 
has  in  view  can  be  attained  by  saying  that  ideas  be- 
come general  by  being  signed  with  a  word. 

Nor  should  I  despair  of  establishing  a  perfect 
agreement  with  M.  Taine,  if  only  he  would  leave  the 
modern  Parisian  nursery  and  follow  me  into  the  dis- 
tant caves  of  our  Aryan  ancestors.  Nothing  can  be 
more  brilliant  than  the  way  in  which  he  describes  the 
process  of  generalisation  going  on  in  the  mind  of  a 
child.2  He  describes  how  the  nurse,  on  showing  a 
dog  to  a  child,  says  oua-oua,  how  the  child's  eyes  fol- 
low the  nurse's  gestures,  how  he  sees  the  dog,  hears 
his  bark,  and  how,  after  a  few  repetitions  which  form 
his  apprenticeship,  the  two  images,  that  of  the  dog 
and  that  of  the  sound,  become,  according  to  the  law 
of  the  association  of  images,  associated  permanently 
in  his  mind.  Thus,  when  he  sees  the  dog  again,  he 
imagines  the  same  sound,  and  by  a  kind  of  imitative 
instinct  he  tries  to  utter  the  same  sound.  When  the 
dog  barks,  the  child  laughs  and  is  enchanted,  and  he 
feels  all  the  more  tempted  to  pronounce  the  sound  of 
the  animal,  which  strikes  him  as  new,  and  of  which 
he  had  hitherto  heard  a  human  imitation  only.  Up  to 
this  point  there  is  nothing  original  or  superior ;  the 
brain  of  every  mammal  is  capable  of  similar  associa- 
tions. What  is  peculiar  to  man  is  that  the  sound  as- 
sociated by  him  with  the  perception  of  a  certain  indi- 
vidual is  called  forth  again,  not  only  by  the  sight  of 
exactly  similar  individuals,  but  likewise  by  the  pres- 
ence of  distinctly  different  individuals,  though  with 

1  Lac.  cit.,  p.  259. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  245. 


g2  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

regard  to  certain  features  belonging  to  the  same  class. 
In  fact,  analogies  which  do  not  strike  an  animal,  strike 
man.  The  child  says  oua-oua  at  the  sight  of  the  dog 
belonging  to  the  house.  Soon  he  says  oua-oua  at  the 
sight  of  poodles,  pugs,  and  Newfoundland  dogs.  A 
little  later  the  child  will  say  oua-oua  to  a  toy  dog 
which  is  made  to  bark  by  some  kind  of  mechanism, 
and  this  no  animal  would  do.  Even  a  toy  dog  which 
does  not  bark,  but  moves  on  wheels — nay,  a  dog  made 
of  bronze,  standing  motionless  and  dumb  in  the  draw- 
ing-room, a  small  friend  walking  on  all  fours  in  the 
nursery,  lastly  a  mere  drawing,  will  evoke  the  same 
sound. 

All  this  is  true,  perfectly  true ;  and  M.  Taine  may 
be  quite  right  in  maintaining  that  the  discoveries  of 
Oken,  Goethe,  and  Newton  are  in  the  end  due  to  the 
same  power  of  discovering  analogies  in  nature.  I 
follow  him  even  when  he  sums  up  in  the  following 
words : — 

"  To  discover  relations  between  most  distant  objects,  to  dis- 
entangle most  delicate  analogies,  to  establish  common  features  in 
the  most  dissimilar  things,  to  isolate  most  abstract  qualities,  all 
these  expressions  have  the  same  meaning,  and  all  these  operations 
can  be  traced  back  to  the  name  being  evoked  by  perceptions  and 
representations  possessing  the  slightest  resemblances,  to  the  signal 
being  roused  by  an  almost  imperceptible  stimulant,  to  the  mental 
word  appearing  in  court  at  the  first  summons." 

With  certain  restrictions,  all  these  observations 
made  among  children  of  the  present  day  apply  with 
equal  force  to  the  children  of  our  race.1  When,  for 
instance,  such  a  word  as  dru,  tree,  had  once  been 
formed,  supposing  that  at  first  it  was  meant  for  such 

ISee  also  L.  M.  Billia,  Due  Risposte  al  Prof.  Angela  Valdarnini  intorno  a 
una  preti-sa.  contraddizione  fro,  la  dottrina  ideologica  e  la  psicologica  del  Ros- 
mini.  Torino,  1887,  p.  14. 


MY    PREDECESSORS.  93 

trees  only  as  could  be  peeled  and  smoothed  and  fash- 
ioned into  some  useful  tools,  it  would  soon  be  trans- 
ferred to  all  trees,  whatever  their  wood.  After  that, 
it  might  become  specialised  again,  as  we  see  in  Greek, 
where  dpvS  means  chiefly  oak,  and  in  Lithunian, 
where  it  means  pine.1  On  the  other  hand,  we  see  a 
word  such  as  oak,  after  it  had  taken  its  definite  mean- 
ing, becoming  generalised  again,  and  being  used  in 
Icelandic  for  trees  in  general. 

With  regard  to  all  this  I  see  no  difference  between 
M.  Taine's  views  and  my  own,  and  I  likewise  fully 
agree  with  him,  when  he  explains  how  in  the  end  every 
word,  before  it  is  used  for  philosophical  purposes,  has 
to  be  carefully  defined.2 

There  is,  however,  some  new  and  important  light 
which  the  Science  of  Language  has  thrown  on  this  old 
problem,  and  which,  if  M.  Taine  had  taken  it  into 
account,  would  have  enabled  him,  not  only  to  establish 
his  own  views  more  firmly,  but  to  extend  them  far 
beyond  the  narrow  walls  of  our  modern  nurseries. 
The  Science  of  Language  has  clearly  shown  that  every 
word  coincides  from  the  very  beginning  with  a  general 
concept.  While  formerly  the  admission  that  thought 
was  impossible  without  words  was  mostly  restricted  to 
general  and  abstract  terms,  we  can  now  extend  it  to 
singular  terms  likewise,  in  fact,  to  the  whole  of  our 
language,  with  the  exception  of  interjections  and  what 
are  called  demonstrative  elements.  That  no  one  could 
think  whiteness,  goodness,  or  even  humanity  or  bru- 
tality was  generally  admitted,  even  by  those  who  hesi- 
tated to  admit  that  no  thought  was  possible  without 
language.  But  now  that  we  can  prove  historically 

ILoc.czt.,  I.,  pp.39,  57- 

2  Biographies  of  Words,  p.  258. 


g4  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

that  even  a  tree  could  not  have  been  named  except  as 
coming  under  the  general  term  of  tearing,  peeling, 
shaping,  or,  in  other  cases,  of  feeding,  sheltering,  or 
growing,  no  wavering  or  haggling  is  any  longer  pos- 
sible. All  our  words  are  conceptual,  all  our  concepts 
are  verbal :  this  is  what  Nominalism  postulated  with- 
out being  able  to  prove  it,  that  is  what  Nominalism 
has  proved  by  means  of  the  discoveries  which  a  com- 
parative study  of  languages  has  placed  at  our  disposal, 
and  which  no  scepticism  can  touch.  From  the  first, 
Comparative  Philology  had  no  such  ulterior  objects  in 
view.  It  confined  itself  to  a  careful  collection  of  facts, 
to  the  analysis  of  all  that  had  become  purely  formal,  to 
the  discovery  of  the  constituent  elements  of  language, 
to  the  establishment  of  the  genealogical  relationship  of 
all  members  of  the  same  family  of  speech  ;  but  beyond 
this  it  did  not  mean  to  go.  When,  however,  some  of 
the  results  at  which  Comparative  Philology  had  ar- 
rived quite  independently,  were  found  to  be  almost 
identical  with  the  teachings  of  some  of  the  most  author- 
itative philosophers  ;  when  it  was  found,  for  instance, 
that  while  Locke  maintained  that  animals  had  no  gen- 
eral ideas  because  they  had  no  words,  the  Science  of 
Language  had  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  animals 
had  no  words  because  they  had  no  general  ideas,1  the 
Science  of  Language  became  ipso  facto  the  Science  of 
Thought,  and  language  and  thought  were  recognised 
once  more  as  two  faces  of  the  same  head. 

The  consequences  which  follow  by  necessity  from 
this  recognition  of  the  identity  of  thought  and  lan- 
guage, and  which  I  was  anxious  to  put  forward  as 
strongly  as  possible  in  my  Science  of  Thought,  may,  no 
doubt,  have  startled  some  philosophers  whose  chief 

1  lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language,  I.,  p.  65. 


MY    PREDECESSORS.  95 

strength  lies  in  the  undefined  use  of  words.  But  that 
theory  itself  could  never  have  startled  a  careful  student 
of  the  history  of  philosophy.  It  is  a  very  old  friend 
with  a  new  face,  and  had  a  right  to  expect  a  different 
reception. 

To  the  Greeks,  we  know,  it  was  so  natural  to  look 
upon  language  and  thought  as  two  sides  of  the  same 
thing,  that  we  can  hardly  appeal  to  them  as  conscious 
upholders  of  such  a  theory.  As  they  used  logos  in  both 
senses,  as  discourse,  whether  internal  or  external,  their 
knowledge  of  the  identity  of  language  and  thought  came 
to  them  by  intuition  rather  than  by  reflexion.  They  had 
never  been  led  astray  as  we  have  been  ;  hence  they 
had  not  to  discover  the  right  way. 

Still,  whenever  Greek  philosophers  come  to  touch 
on  this  question,  they  speak  with  no  uncertain  tone, 
though  even  then  they  are  generally  satisfied'  with  stat- 
ing the  truth,  without  attempting  to  prove  what,  in 
their  eyes,  seemed  hardly  to  require  any  proof — namely, 
the  identity  of  language  and  thought. 

In  the  Sophist,  Plato  begins  by  showing  how  lan- 
guage (Ao^o?)  may  be  true  or  false,  and  only  after 
having  proved  this,  does  he  proceed  to  show  that 
thought  and  imagination  also  may  be  true  or  false. 
For,  he  proceeds,  "thought  (diavoia)  is  the  same  as 
language,  with  this  exception,  that  thought  is  the  con- 
versation of  the  soul  with  herself  which  takes  place 
without  voice,  while  the  stream  which,  accompanied 
by  sound,  flows  from  thought  through  the  lips,  is 
called  language  (Ao^os)."  He  then  defines  opinion 
(66%a)  as  the  result  of  thinking  (diavoiaS  aTroreXsv- 
rr/aif),  and  imagination  ((parraffia)  as  the  union  of 
opinion  and  sensation.  In  this  way  only,  that  is,  by 
proving  that  thought,  opinion,  and  imagination  are 


96  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

closely  akin  to  language,  does  he  establish  in  the  end 
that,  as  language  has  been  proved  to  be  either  true  or 
false,  thought,  opinion,  and  imagination  also  may  be 
true  or  false. 

Whether  Plato  could  not  have  established  the  pos- 
sibility of  truth  and  falsehood  in  thought,  opinion, 
and  imagination  by  a  simpler  and  shorter  process,  is 
not  the  question  which  concerns  us  here.  What  con- 
cerns us  is  the  perfect  assurance  with  which  he  iden- 
tifies here,  as  well  as  in  the  Theaetetus  (igo),1  speech 
(\6yos)  and  thought  (didvoia*),  an  assurance  which 
seems  to  be  shared  by  his  latest  translator,  Professor 
Jowett,  when  finding  fault  with  Hegel  because  "he 
speaks  as  if  thought,  instead  of  being  identical  with 
language,  was  wholly  independent  of  it."2 

Now,  therefore,  when  it  will  hardly  be  safe  to  say 
any  longer  that  the  identity  of  language  and  thought 
is  something  quite  unheard  of,  a  paradox,  a  mere  per- 
versity (all  these  expressions  have  been  used  by  men 
who  call  themselves  philosophers,  and  even  professors 
of  philosophy),  the  next  step  will  probably  be  to  treat 
it  as  a  mere  question  of  words. 

And,  indeed,  it  is  a  question  of  words,  but  in  the 
true  sense  of  that  word.3 

If  we  use  thought  promiscuously  for  every  kind  of 
mental  process,  it  stands  to  reason  that  to  say  that 
thought  is  impossible  without  language  would  be  ab- 

1 ' '  What  do  you  mean  by  thinking  ?"  "I  mean  by  thinking  the  conversa- 
tion which  the  soul  holds  with  herself  in  thinking  of  anything I  say,  then, 

that  to  form  an  opinion  is  to  speak,  and  opinion  is  a  word  spoken,  I  mean,  to 
oneself  and  in  silence,  not  aloud,  or  to  another.1 ' 

2 Plato,  Vol.  IV.,  p.  420.  Hegel,  however,  said:  "We  think  in  names;" 
see  Science  of  Thought,  p.  45. 

3  "Bin  Wortstreit  entsteht  daraus,  weil  ich  die  Sachen  unter  andern 
Kombinationen  sentire  und  drum,  ihre  Relativitat  ausdruckend,  sie  anders 
benennen  muss."— Goethe  an  Lavater,  1774. 


MY    PREDECESSORS.  97 

surd.  To  feel  pain  and  pleasure  is  an  inward  mental 
process,  to  see  and  hear  are  inward  mental  processes ; 
to  stare  at  the  images  of  present  and  past  events,  to 
build  castles  in  the  air,  to  feed  on  such  stuff  as  dreams 
are  made  of — all  this  might  certainly  be  brought  under 
the  general  category  of  mental  activity.  For  ordinary 
purposes  we  need  not  be  too  particular  about  lan- 
guage, and,  if  people  like  to  call  all  this  thinking,  why 
should  we  object?  I,  myself,  when  there  can  be  no 
misunderstanding,  use  thought  in  that  general  sense, 
and  use  the  word  mind  for  all  that  is  going  on  within 
us,  whether  sensation,  perception,  conception  or  nam- 
ing.1 I  did  not,  therefore,  put  on  my  title-page,  "No 
thought  without  language,"  but  "No  reason  without 
language,"  and  I  did  so  after  having  denned  reason  as 
the  addition  and  subtraction  of  conceptual  words. 

But  though  admitting  this  general  meaning  of 
thinking,  we  should  carefully  distinguish  it  from  its 
more  special  and  technical  use,  when  it  becomes  syn- 
onymous with  reasoning,  and  is,  in  fact,  speaking  sotto 
or  senza  voce.  Whenever  there  is  danger  of  misap- 
prehension, it  is  decidedly  better  to  avoid 'it  by  defi- 
nition, but  in  most  cases  it  is  quite  clear  whether  to 
think  is  used  in  its  general  or  in  its  special  sense.  If, 
therefore,  it  is  said  that  the  question  of  the  identity  of 
thought  and  language  is  a  mere  question  of  words,  I 
say,  Yes,  it  is  ;  but  so  is  every  question  of  philosophy, 
if  rightly  understood.  Words  are  terms,  and  only  if 
rightly  determined  do  they  enable  us  to  reason  rightly. 
Let  the  word  thought  be  rightly  defined,  and  let  the 
word  language  be  rightly  defined,  and  their  identity  will 
require  no  further  proof ;  for,  when  we  maintain  their 
identity,  we  do  not  mean  by  language  mere  sound, 

1  Science  of  Thought,  p.  20. 


qg  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

nor  do  we  mean  by  thought  mere  sensation  or  imagi- 
nation, but  knowledge  of  something  that  can  neither 
be  felt  nor  imagined,  and  can  only  be  signified.  We 
can  never  see  nor  can  we  imagine  tree,  dog,  man,  tri- 
angle, polygon,  parallelepiped,  and  all  the  rest  of  our 
dictionary.  Then  what  are  tree,  dog,  man,  and  all  the 
rest?  They  are  names  (nomina=gnomina),  that  is,  acts 
of  knowledge,  and  of  that  peculiar  class  of  knowledge 
which  cannot  possibly  have  anything  corresponding  to 
it  in  sensuous  perception  or  imagination,  because  it 
has  always  reference  to  something  which  we  discover 
in  and  lift  out  from  percepts  in  order  to  signify  whole 
classes  of  percepts,  but  never  any  real  and  individual 
percept.  We  can  afterwards  use  these  names,  and 
say,  for  instance,  this  is  a  tree,  this  is  a  dog  ;  but  tree 
and  dog,  which  we  thus  predicate,  are  general  and  ab- 
stract terms  ;  they  are  not  the  fir-tree  or  the  poodle 
dog  which  our  sensation  and  imagination  present  to  us. 

I  hope  that,  after  this  definition  of  the  true  mean- 
ing of  language  and  thought,  the  usual  result  will  fol- 
low, and  that  my  critics  will  say  that,  if  I  meant  no 
more  than  that, no  one  would  think  of  differing  from  me, 
and  that  I  have  only  myself  to  blame  for  not  having 
made  my  meaning  clear.  I  am  quite  willing  to  take 
that  blame  so  long  as  I  may  agree  with  my  adversa- 
ries quickly.  If  people  will  only  see  what  "a  question 
of  words  "  really  means,  I  believe  there  will  soon  be 
peace  among  all  contending  philosophical  parties. 

But,  unfortunately,  we  think  but  too  much  in  words, 
and  almost  let  them  think  for  us,  instead  of  making 
them  completely  our  own.  We  take  our  words  as  they 
come  to  us  by  inheritance,  and  we  trust  that  other 
people  will  take  them  in  the  same  sense  in  which  we 
use  them. 


MY    PREDECESSORS.  99 

And  yet  nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  two  peo- 
ple hardly  ever  take  the  same  word  in  the  same  sense, 
and  that  just  the  most  important  words  are  often  used 
in  entirely  different  senses  by  different  philosophers. 
Hence  all  our  misunderstandings,  all  our  quarrellings, 
all  our  so-called  systems  of  philosophy,  every  one  dif- 
fering from  the  other,  and  yet  all  starting  from  the 
same  given  facts,  all  collected  by  the  same  eyes  and 
the  same  minds  ! 

If  all  philosophers  used  the  same  words  in  the 
same  sense,  their  conclusions  would  differ  as  little  as 
the  conclusions  of  mathematicians.  A  mathematician 
knows  exactly  what  is  the  meaning  of  the  terms  with 
which  he  operates,  while  philosophers  will  hardly  ever 
condescend  to  define  the  terms  which  they  use.  We 
wonder  why  mathematicians  always  arrive  at  the  same 
results,  or,  if  they  do  not,  why  they  can  always  dis- 
cover the  mistakes  they  have  made.  But  how  could 
it  be  otherwise?  Even  their  highest  problems,  which 
completely  stagger  the  unmathematical  mind,  consist 
in  the  end  in  nothing  but  addition  and  subtraction. 
Our  reasoning  also,  even  when  it  reaches  the  highest 
metaphysical  problems,  consists  in  nothing  but  addi- 
tion and  subtraction.  What  else  could  it  consist  in? 
But  there  is  this  difference,  that,  while  the  mathema- 
tician adds  and  subtracts  values  which  are  defined 
within  the  strictest  limits,  the  philosopher  adds  and 
subtracts  values  which  are  often  not  defined  at  all,  or 
defined  within  the  vaguest  limits.  If  the  metaphysi- 
cian does  not  actually  play  with  loaded  dice,  he  often 
uses  dice  which  he  has  never  examined,  and  which, 
for  all  he  knows,  may  have  been  marked  rightly  or 
wrongly  by  those  who  placed  them  in  his  hands.  If 
all  our  words  were  defined  as  triangles,  squares,  and 


100  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

spheres  are  in  geometry,  or  as  1.999  *s  m  arithmetic 
philosophy  would  soon  become  a  worthy  rival  of  math- 
ematics. 

The  only  hope  of  peace  and  of  an  understanding 
between  various  schools  of  philosophy  lies  in  defini- 
tion, and  definition  ought  at  the  present  moment  to  be 
the  chief  employment  of  all  honest  philosophers. 

But  we  want  more  than  definition — we  want  a 
thorough  purification  of  language.  A  perfect  lan- 
guage ought  to  be  like  a  perfect  alphabet.  As  in  a 
perfect  alphabet  the  same  letter  ought  always  to  have 
one  and  the  same  sound,  and  the  same  sound  ought 
always  to  be  represented  by  one  and  the  same  letter, 
so,  in  a  perfect  language,  the  same  word  ought  always 
to  have  one  and  the  same  meaning,  and  the  same 
meaning  ought  always  to  be  represented  by  one  and 
the  same  word.  I  know  all  poets  will  cry  out  against 
this  heresy,  but  I  am  speaking  of  philosophical,  not  of 
poetical,  language. 

Languages  suffer  from  wealth  even  more  than  from 
poverty.  The  human  mind  is  so  made  that  it  is  always 
inclined  to  presuppose  a  difference  of  meaning  where 
there  is  a  difference  of  names.  Because  we  have  a 
number  of  names  to  signify  what  is  going  on  within 
us,  such  as  spirit,  mind,  understanding,  intelligence, 
and  reason,  philosophers  have  made  every  kind  of  ef- 
fort to  show  how  each  differs  from  the  rest,  till  we 
seem  to  have  ever  so  many  pigeon-holes  within  us, 
and  ever  so  many  pigeons  hatching  their  eggs  in  them, 
instead  of  one  undivided  mental  activity,  applied  to 
different  objects. 

While  here  confusion  is  due  to  too  great  a  wealth  of 
expression,  we  saw  before  how  the  employment  of  the 
word  language  in  totally  different  senses,  or  poverty  of 


MY  PREDECESSORS.  IOI 

expression,  played  equal  havoc  with  our  thoughts.  If 
we  can  speak  of  the  language  of  the  eyes,  of  the  lan- 
guage of  silence,  of  the  language  of  flowers,  of  the  lan- 
guage of  animals,  no  wonder  that  we  forget  altogether 
the  distinctive  meaning  of  language  when  used  in  the 
definite  sense  of  expression  of  conceptual  thought  by 
conceptual  words.  Let  this  definition  of  language  be 
granted,  and  ever  so  many  books  might  have  remained 
unwritten.  We  are  all  dealing  with  the  same  facts 
when  we  say  that  animals  have  no  language,  while 
others  say  they  have  language.  We  may  go  on  for- 
ever collecting  anecdotes  of  parrots  and  jackdaws,  we 
shall  never  come  to  a  mutual  understanding.  But  let 
language  be  once  defined,  and  all  wrangling  will  cease. 
If  language  is  defined  as  communication  in  general, 
we  shall  all  agree  that  animals  have  language.  If  lan- 
guage means  human  language,  conceptual  language, 
language  derived  from  roots,  then  we  shall  all  agree 
that  animals  have  no  language. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  philosophy  that  we  want  a 
katharsis  of  human  speech ;  it  is  wanted  in  every 
sphere  of  human  thought.  Think  of  the  different 
meanings  attached  to  the  word  gentleman.  From  the 
most  opposite  quarters,  from  high  and  low,  you  hear 
the  expression,  "He  is  a  gentleman,"  or  "He  is  not 
a  gentleman."  If  you  venture  to  doubt,  or  are  bold 
enough  to  ask  for  a  definition  of  gentleman,  you  run 
a  considerable  risk  of  being  told  that  you  are  not  a 
gentleman  yourself  if  you  do  not  know  what  gentle- 
man means.  Yet  the  butler  will  call  you  a  gentleman 
if  you  give  him  ten  shillings  instead  of  half-a-crown ; 
your  friends  will  doubt  whether  you  are  a  gentleman 
if  you  indulge  in  that  kind  of  menial  generosity.  And 
if  there  is  this  haze  about  the  meaning  of  gentleman, 


102  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

think  of  the  polychromatic  iridescence  that  plays  round 
the  name  of  lady.  The  best  we  can  do  when  we  are 
asked  to  define  that  word  is  to  say  that  it  cannot  be 
defined,  and  that  to  define  means  to  destroy  its  charm, 
which  can  be  felt  only,  but  cannot  be  analysed. 

If  you  wish  to  see  a  real  confusion  of  tongues,  you 
need  not  go  to  the  plain  in  the  land  of  Shinar,  but  read 
any  article  on  art  in  any  of  our  leading  reviews.  If  you 
were  to  ask  for  a  definition  of  almost  any  word  used  in 
these  reviews,  whether  nice,  sweet,  charming,  felici- 
tous, exquisite,  lovely,  heavenly,  or  realistic,  warm, 
throbbing,  bewitching,  killing,  and  all  the  rest,  you 
would  fare  very  badly.  You  would  be  called  a  pedant, 
or  an  ignoramus,  and  you  would  require  no  definition 
of  what  is  meant  by  these  words. 

Look  for  a  moment  at  political  language.  An  emi- 
nent politician  has  lately  spoken  in  rapturous  terms 
about  the  name  of  Home  Rule.  He  called  it  so  de- 
lightful a  term,  so  apt,  so  full  of  meaning.  To  others 
it  seems  the  most  stupid  word  that  has  lately  been  in- 
vented, and  exactly  for  the  same  reason — namely,  be- 
cause it  is  so  full,  so  brimful  of  meaning.  Define 
Home  Rule,  and  if  we  do  not  all  of  us  become  Home 
Rulers  at  once,  we  shall  at  all  events  be  able  to  com- 
pare notes,  to  arrive  at  a  mutual  understanding,  and 
to  find  out  what  is  practicable  and  what  is  not.  Every 
individual,  every  home,  every  town,  every  county  has 
a  right  to  so  much  individual  liberty,  to  so  much  Home 
Rule,  to  so  much  municipal  freedom,  to  so  much 
county  government,  as  is  compatible  with  the  vital  in- 
terest of  the  commonwealth.  All  individual  claims 
that  clash  with  the  welfare  of  the  larger  communities 
must  be  surrendered,  some  for  a  time,  others  in  per- 
petuity. Home  Rule,  in  its  undefined  meaning,  is 


MY    PREDECESSORS.  103 

certainly  brimful  of  meaning,  but  these  words  over- 
flowing with  meaning  are  exactly  the  most  bewilder- 
ing and  the  most  misleading  terms.  Home  Rule  may 
mean  liberty,  independence,  self-government,  and  a 
careful  regard  to  local  interests.  In  that  sense  we  are 
all  Home  Rulers.  But  it  may  also  mean  licence,  sedi- 
tion, and  selfishness — and  in  that  sense,  I  hope,  the 
number  of  Home  Rulers  is  very  small  in  the  United 
Kingdom  of  Ireland,  Scotland,  and  England. 

But  much  more  serious  consequences  may  follow 
from  a  careless  use  of  words.  Politics,  after  all,  are 
but  a  small  section  of  ethics,  and  we  have  lately  seen  a 
complete  sytem  of  ethics  built  up  on  the  ambiguous 
use  of  the  word  good.  No  doubt,  a  knife,  or  a  gun,  or 
a  house  may  be  called  good,  if  they  are  well  adapted 
to  cut,  to  shoot,  and  to  shelter.  We  may  also  speak 
of  actions  as  good  or  bad,  not  in  a  moral  sense,  but 
simply  as  answering  their  purpose.  A  shot,  for  in- 
stance, may  be  called  a  good  shot,  if  it  is  well  aimed 
and  well  delivered,  even  though  it  should  be  the  shot 
of  a  murderer.  The  first  arrow  which  William  Tell 
let  fly  at  the  apple  on  the  head  of  his  son  was  a  good 
shot,  but  there  was  no  moral  element  in  it,  because  the 
father  acted  under  constraint.  But  if  he  had  wounded 
his  son,  and  then,  as  he  intended,  had  shot  the  second 
arrow  at  Gessler,  that  might  likewise  have  been  a  good 
shot,  in  one  sense,  but,  from  a  moral  point  of  view,  it 
would  have  been  murder. 

But  to  say  that  moral  actions  also  are  called  good 
or  bad,  according  as  the  adjustments  of  acts  to  ends 
are  or  are  not  efficient,  is  mere  jugglery  with  words. 
Good  has  two  meanings,  and  these  two  meanings 
should  be  kept  carefully  apart.  Good  may  mean  use- 
ful, but  good  also  means  what  is  anything  but  use- 


104 


SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


ful  or  profitable  ;  and  it  is  goodness  in  that  sense  which 
moral  philosophy  has  to  account  for.  It  is  quite  open 
to  any  philosopher  to  say  that  nothing  should  be  called 
good  except  what  is  in  some  sense  or  other  useful. 
But  in  that  case  the  meaning  of  usefulness  ought  to 
be  properly  defined  ;  we  ought  not  to  imagine  that, 
because  we  use  the  same  word,  we  are  thinking  the 
same  thought.  Now,  how  does  our  utilitarian  philos- 
opher define  moral  usefulness  ?  He  maintains  that 
as  the  preservation  and  prolongation  of  our  own  life 
are  our  summum  bonum,  any  acts  conducing  to  this 
should  be  called  good.  Here  many  people  would 
question  the  statement  that  preservation,  and,  more 
particularly,  prolongation,  of  life  beyond  a  certain 
term  could  always  be  called  the  highest  good  ;  but, 
even  admitting  this,  we  might  indeed  call  cannibalism 
useful,  for  the  preservation  and  prolongation  of  life, 
but  we  should  hardly  call  it  good. 

It  is  different  when  we  come  to  consider  the  two 
other  spheres  of  action  in  which  we  are  told  that  any 
acts  useful  for  the  preservation  and  prolongation  of 
life  of  our  own  offspring,  and  of  our  fellow  creatures, 
should  be  called  good. 

Here  we  must  again  distinguish.  Any  act  for  the 
benefit  of  our  own  offspring  may  be  useful,  wise,  and 
prudent,  and,  if  well  conceived  and  carefully  carried 
out,  may  be  called  good,  in  one  sense.  But  not  till  we 
know  the  motive,  should  we  call  it  good  in  the  other 
sense.  In  a  primitive  state  of  society  children  consti- 
tuted the  wealth  and  strength  of  a  family,  and  to  feed 
them  and  keep  them  from  danger  was  no  more  meri- 
torious than  the  feeding  and  keeping  of  slaves  and 
cattle.  From  a  purely  utilitarian  point  of  view,  how- 
ever, it  would  be  useful,  and  therefore  good,  not  to 


MY   PREDECESSORS.  105 

rear  weak  or  crippled  children,  but  to  kill  them,  and 
here  for  the  first  time  real  goodness  comes  in.  Real 
goodness  is  always,  in  some  form  or  other,  unselfish- 
ness. The  unselfishness  of  a  mother  in  bringing  up  a 
child  that  must  always  be  a  trouble  and  burden  to  her 
may  be  very  misguided,  anything  but  good  in  the  eyes 
of  those  who  interpret  good  as  useful ;  but  neverthe- 
less, so  long  as  the  word  good  exists,  it  has  always 
been  applied  to  such  acts. 

In  this  case,  however,  the  psychologist  may  still 
discover  traces  of  selfishness  in  the  natural  love  of  a 
mother.  But  in  the  third  sphere  of  action,  in  our  en- 
deavor to  preserve  and  prolong  the  life  of  our  fellow 
creatures,  or,  more  correctly,  in  our  endeavors  to  pro- 
mote their  general  happiness,  we  can  easily  distin- 
guish between  acts  that  ought  to  be  called  good,  sim- 
ply in  the  sense  of  useful,  and  acts  that  ought  to  be 
called  good,  in  the  sense  of  unselfish.  A  man  who 
fulfils  the  general  duties  necessary  for  keeping  a  com- 
munity together  may  be  called  a  good,  that  is,  a  use- 
ful citizen.  He  is  useful  to  society,  but  he  is  useful 
also  to  himself,  as  a  member  of  that  society.  A  man, 
however,  who,  like  Marcus  Curtius,  jumped  into  the 
abyss  in  order  to  save  Rome,  may  no  doubt  be  called 
a  fool  by  utilitarian  philosophers,  but  the  Romans 
called  him  good,  and  we  too  must  call  him  unselfish. 
And  a  man  who,  like  Gordon,  remained  at  his  post, 
trusting  in  his  God  and  in  his  country,  may  be  called 
a  madman  ;  but  no  one  would  dare  to  call  him  selfish, 
and  posterity  will  keep  for  him  a  place  of  honor  among 
the  heroes,  among  the  martyrs,  among  the  good  men 
of  England. 

Philosophers  are  perfectly  justified  in  attempting 
to  build  up  systems  of  ethics  on  utilitarian  and  hedon- 


106  SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 

istic  principles.  We  should  not  even  contest  their 
right  to  give  a  new  definition  of  goodness,  and  to  say 
that  with  them  it  shall  mean  nothing  but  usefulness. 
But  they  must  not  play  with  language,  and  tell  us  that 
what  the  world  meant  by  good  was  never  more  than 
what  they  mean  by  useful.  On  the  contrary,  the  word 
good  was  framed  originally  to  signify  acts  which  were 
not  useful,  nay,  which  might  be  detrimental  to  the 
agent,  and  which,  nevertheless,  require  our  approval. 
Their  usefulness  depends  on  the  means  which  we  em- 
ploy, goodness  on  the  objects  which  we  have  in  view. 
We  may  call  useful  what  is  selfish,  we  can  never  call 
what  is  selfish  good. 

There  is  no  sphere  of  mental  activity  which  does 
not  stand  in  need  of  the  corrective  influence  of  the 
Science  of  Thought.  If  soldiers  must  look  to  their 
swords,  philosophers  will  have  to  look  to  their  words. 
I  know  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  inquiry  into  the  sup- 
ply, and  a  vigorous  test  of  the  efficiency,  of  words  will 
be  declared  a  nuisance,  will  be  resisted  and  resented 
as  an  insult.  But,  in  spite  of  all  that,  it  will  come,  in 
some  departments  of  thought  it  has  already  come, 
and  in  the  future  battles  of  the  world  good  swords 
and  good  words  will  carry  the  day. 


INDEX. 


Abbot,  The,  12. 

Bergen,  21. 

Abelard,  75. 

Berkeley,  90. 

Abstract,  28. 

Bet,  you,  slang,  17. 

Agassiz,  46. 

B  h  a  r  ,  Sanskrit  root,  23,  26,  27. 

A  g  n  i  ,  63,  64. 

Bhratar,  40. 

Alphabet,  100. 

B  i-b  h  ar  m  i,  27. 

Americans,  slang  of,  16. 

Bible,  11,  14. 

An/aid,  12. 

Bier,  20  et  seq. 

Animal,  man  and,  2-6,  32. 

Billia,  L.  M.,  92. 

Anred,  12. 

Birch,  62. 

Anthropology,  47. 

5zW/z,  23,  27. 

Antiquated  words,  12  et  seq. 

Blood,  thicker  than  water,  35  ;   lan- 

Apes, language  of,  5. 

guage    thicker    than,   40;    thought 

Ap^z'thagbhava,  84. 

thicker  than,  43  et  seq.;  mixture  of, 

Aristotle,  82. 

49  et  seq. 

Art,  102. 

Blumenbach,  44  et  seq. 

Aryan  languages,  23,  31,  35,  7«- 

Bopp,  67. 

Aryas,  50,  53,  55-66. 

Bossuet,  78. 

Asia,  56,  64. 

Bow-wow,  92  et  seq. 

Astronomy,  66. 

Brahmans,  78. 

Australian  slang,  17. 

Brat,  15. 

Avenant,  12. 

Buddhism,  58. 

Buffon,  46. 

Bah,  26,  30. 

Bunsen,  43. 

Bairn,  21. 

Burden,  20  et  seq. 

Bangster,  12. 

Burke,  46. 

Bar,  the  root,  22,  27. 

Barbarians,  37. 

Camel,  63. 

Barley,  21  et  seq.,  26. 

Cannibalism,  104. 

Barn,  22. 

Cassiodorus,  60. 

Barrier,  between  man  and  beast,  lan- 

Caucasus, 56. 

guage  a,  5,  32,  34- 

Caxton,  12. 

Barrow,  20  et  seq. 

Celts,  53. 

Barrows,  funeral,  59. 

Chaucer,  16. 

Battery,  13. 

Chemical  analysis  of  words,  25  et  seq. 

Bear,  20-23,  27. 

Chemistry,  33. 

Beech,  63. 

Child-psychology,  91, 

Beorh,  21. 

Children,  104. 

io8 


SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


Chinese,  education,  IO-H  ;  language, 

Erse,  55. 

23- 

Ethnology,  44  et  seq. 

Chips  of  the  same  block,  40. 
Clamor  concomitans,  30. 

Ethics,  103. 
Europe,  56  et  seq. 

Classical  languages,  37  et  seq. 

Colloquial  language,  9  et  seq. 
Comparative,  grammar,  37  ;    philol- 

Faerie Queen,  14. 
Fair  maids,  19. 

ogy,  33.  67  et  seq.,  94- 

Familiarity,  breeds  contempt,  i. 

Concepts,  29,  90,  91. 

Farina,  26. 

Condillac,  76. 

Fenians,  53. 

Consonants,  in  roots,  28. 

Fer,  root,  23,  26. 

Conversation    of    the    soul,   thought 

Finnish,  68. 

the,  95. 

Fir,  63. 

Coral  islands,  33. 

Fire,  63-64. 

Cradle  of  the  Aryas,  55  et  seq. 

Flatus  vocis,  84. 

Crawford,  46. 

Flowers,  language  of,  101. 

Cuckoo,  26,  30. 

Folk-lore,  39,  71. 

Cuneiform  inscriptions,  59. 

French,  53. 

Curtius,  Marcus,  68,  105. 

Fumada,  19. 

Cuvier,  45,  46. 

Gaelic,  55. 

Dante,  18. 

General  ideas,  90. 

DAR,  89. 

Gentleman,  101. 

Darius,  59, 

Geography,  66. 

Darwin,  45,  74,  75,  83. 

Geology,  30,  56,  66. 

De  Bonald,  75,  77,  78  et  seq. 

Germany,  54,  57  et  seq. 

Definition,  100. 

Gessler,  103. 

Demonstrative  elements,  27. 

Gestures,  86. 

Descartes,  79. 

Get,  slovenly  use  of,  17. 

DH,  root,  69. 

Gheyn,  Van  den,  65. 

Dialects,  9  et  seq.,  55,  71. 

Goethe,  38,  92,  96. 

Dice,  99. 

Good,  its  many  meanings,  103  et  seq. 

Dictionaries,  10,  n,  26,  71. 

Gordon,  105. 

Dog,  91,  92,  98. 

Gothic,  38,  39. 

Dove-tailed,  19. 

Grammar,  as  a  criterion  of  language, 

Dowald,  19. 

50. 

Dry,  17. 

Grammarians  of  India,  25. 

Greats,  18. 

Economy  of  language,  22,  69. 

Greek  language,  37,  39. 

Edda,  The,  38,  61. 

Greeks,  38,  57,  95. 

Edgren,  26. 

Grimm,  68,  71. 

Education,  essential  elements  of,  66. 

Gulphed,  18. 

Elements  of  words,  22  et  seq.,  27,  33. 

Ellis,  71. 

Hair,  as  a  criterion  of  race,  47,  53. 

ifujtveiv,  14. 

Hale,  Horatio,  17,  41,  46,  47,  48,  64. 

England  and  India,  41-42. 

Heathen,  14. 

English  language,  its  character  and 

Hebrew,  not  the  original  tongue,  37, 

history,  8  et  seq.;  its  stock  of  words, 

69. 

8,  net  seq.,  20  et  seq. 

Hedonism,  105. 

Ephesus,  34. 

Hegel,  75,  96. 

io9 


Heimskringla,  61. 

made  of,  ictseq.;    an  impassable 

Herder,  38,  75. 

barrier  between  man    and    beast, 

Hermann  Gottfried,  38. 

2-6,  32-34;  of  parrots,  2;  the  begin- 

Hindus,  40-41. 

man  origin,  3  et  seq.;  the  communi- 

History, 66. 

cative    utterances  of   animals   not 

Hobbes,  75,  78. 

language,  4-5  ;  has  raised  man  to  a 

Hochstufe,  70. 

new,  intellectual  plane,  6-7;  knowl- 

Hoiden, 14. 

edge  of,  requisite  to  a  good  educa- 

Home rule,  102. 

tion,  7;  though  a  miracle,  yet  infin- 

Homer, 37. 

itely  simple,  7  et  seq.;    we  all  play 

Homo  sapiens,  6. 

at  least  one  language,  8,  66;  illiter- 

Housewife, 28. 

ate  speech  the  beginnings  of  liter- 

Humboldt, W.  von,  45,  75. 

ary  speech,   9  et  seq.;    colloquial, 

Huzzy,  28. 

dialectic,  technical,  etc.,  9-10,  16- 

• 

20;   no  mystery  in,  n  et  seq.;  obso- 

Ice, 62. 

lete,  12  ;    deterioration  of,   13  ;    all 

Identity  of  thought  and  language,  73 

language  in  its  origin  vulgar,  18; 

et  seq. 

the  constituent  elements  of,  roots, 

Idiot,  13. 

etc.,  20-23,  25-32;  its  parsimony,  22; 

Images,  88-89,  9°- 

chemical  analysis  of,  25  et  seq.;  its 

Imagination,  95. 

explanation  ultimately  amounts  to 

Imp,  14. 

the    explanation    of  its  roots,   28; 

Imperial  rule,  55. 

roots  the  feeders  of,  29  ;    the  light 

Itnpfen,  14. 

it  throws  on  the  origin  of  thought, 

India,  25,  39-41. 

30-34  ;  the  geology  of  language,  30; 

Indo-European,  39. 

derived    from    sounds    expressing 

Indus,  58,  65. 

the  consciousness  of  repeated  acts, 

Infixes,  27. 

30-31  ;   roots  the  foundation  of,  31- 

Interjections,  27. 

32;  the  simplicity  of,  33  ;  compared 

Intermarriages,  52. 

to  coral  islands  as  the  outcome  of 

Italy,  54. 

the  untold  labor  of  millions  of  an- 

cestors,   33-34;     the    light   of   the 

Jabber,  84. 

world,  34  ;  thicker  than  blood,  35, 

39-42;    hypothetical  primitive,  35- 

Jordanes,  on  the  origin  of  the  Aryas, 
60  et  seq. 
Jowett,  Prof.,  96. 
Juggernaut,  41. 

37;    relationship  of  language   and 
relationship   of  blood,   43  et  seq.; 
linguistic    classification    of    more 
evidential   value   as  proving  com- 
munity of  descent  than  physiologi- 

cal classification,  44-55  ;    it  is  lan- 

Kant, 4,  82,  83. 

guage    that  makes   man,  49;    the 

Katharsis,  101. 

very  embodiment  of  our  true  selves, 

Kitchen-middens,  59. 

49;  language  as  a  synonym  of  peo- 

Knave, 13. 

ples,  51  ;    as  a  means  of  historical 

Knowledge,  8. 

research,  62  et  seq.;   the  secrets  of, 

Kohistan,  64. 

betrayed  by  Sanskrit,  70  ;  the  work 

to  be    done  in,  71  ;    genealogical 

Lady,  102. 

table  of  the  Aryan  family  of,  72; 

Language,   our  familiarity  with,    i  ; 

identity  of  thought  and,  73  et  seq.; 

whence  it  came  from  and  what  it  is 

and  thought,  two  faces  of  the  same 

SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


head,  94  ;  Plato  on,  95  ;  defined,  97 

Mystery,  in  language,  no,  u  et  seq. 

et  seq.,  100  et  seq.;   purification  of, 

Mythology,  38,  39. 

the  headings  Language,  Science  of, 

Names,  98. 

Words,   Roots,   and  the  adjectives 

Nationalities,  54. 

English,  Aryan,  etc. 

Nebuchadnezzar,  51,  53. 

Language,  Science  of,  its  place  in 

Naeitu,  15- 

education,  6,66;  its  simple  but  sig- 

Newton, 79,  92. 

nificant  lessons,  8,  32  et  seq.,  34-42; 

Nibelunge,  The,  38. 

encouraged    national    aspirations, 

Nice,  15. 
Nigger,  41. 

37,  54-55  ;  has  enlarged  our  histori- 

Noire, 86. 

cal  horizon,  39;  its  bearing  on  phi- 

Nominalism, 76,  94  et  seq. 

losophy,  75,  76,  86;  shows  the  iden- 

Nursery psychology,  91. 

tity  of  words  and  concepts,  93  et 

seq. 
Lamarck,  75. 

Oak,  63,  93- 

Latham,  59  et  seq. 
Latin,  37. 

Odin,  61. 
Officina  gentium,  60. 

Lavater  96. 

Oken,  75,  92. 

Linnaeus,  46. 

Onomatopoeia,  26. 

Lion,  63. 

Opinion,  95. 

Literary  standard,  9  et  seq. 
Little  go,  18. 

Orosius,  60. 
Oxford  Dictionary,  10,  71. 

Littre,  71. 

Oxus,  56,  65. 

Locke,  82,  90-91,  94. 

Logos,  74,  85,  95  et  seq. 

Pagan,  14, 

Luck,  ii. 

Pamir,  56,  62. 

Lucretius,  75. 

PSwini,  25. 

PanjSb,  57. 

Maids,  Fair,  19. 

Parliamentary  English,  9-10. 

Maistre,  De,  75,  78,  79  et  seq. 

Parrots,  language  of,  2-3,  101. 

Man,  descent  of,  2-6,  32-33. 

Particular  ideas,  90. 

Manchester,  school  of,  68  et  seq. 

People,  language  a  synonym  of,  51. 

Mansel,  75. 

Percept,  28. 

Mar,  30. 

Persia,  57. 

Mare's  nest,  75. 

Peschel,  Oscar,  46-47. 

M  a  t  a  r  ,  40. 

<j>ep,  root,  23. 

Mathematics,  99. 

Philology  and  ethnology,  44  et  seq.; 

Media,  57. 

comparative,  27,  33,  67,  94. 

Mental  activity,  97  et  seq. 

Philosophy,  66,  74  et  seq.,  97,  99. 

Micklosich,  68. 

Physiological  classifications,  9  et  seq. 

Mill,  J.  Stuart,  80. 

Pickering,  46. 

Miracle,  language  a,  7. 

Pigeon-holes,  100. 

Moderations,  18. 

Planets,  88. 

Moo,  26,  30. 

Plato,  95,  96. 

Morris,  71. 

Ploughed,  18. 

Morton,  46. 

Population  of  the  earth,  52. 

Motherly  love,  105. 

Pott,  67. 

MUller,  Friedrich,  46-48. 

Powell,  Major,  47. 

Muller,  Otfried,  38. 

Prefixes,  27. 

INDEX. 


Prichard,  45,  46. 

Star,  87. 

Primary  words,  20. 

Statesmanship,  55. 

Proto-Aryan,  23,  35. 

Stewart,  Dugald,  78. 

Trpurov  •f  eddcif,  84. 

Strew,  87. 

Proverbs,  14. 

Suffixes,  23,  27. 

Suttee,  41. 

Races  of  man,  44  et  seq. 

Sweden,  58  et  seq. 

Realism,  76. 

Sweet,  71. 

Reason,  97  et  seq. 

Swift,  13. 

Religion,  66. 

Swords,  soldiers  must  look  to  their, 

Repetition  of  acts,  leads  to  the  origin 
of  common  concepts,  29  et  seq. 

106. 
Symbolism,  intellectual,  5. 

Robert  of  Gloucester,  15. 

Romanes,  G.  J.,3,  4,  5. 
Romans,  38,  105. 

Taine,  75,  80,  91,  92  et  seq. 
Tan,  30. 

Rook,  Sir  George,  13, 

Tear,  89. 

Roots,  20,  23,  25  et  seq.,  28  et  seq.,  31 

Technical  terms,  19. 

et  seq.,  86. 

Tell,  William,  103. 

Rosmini,  75. 

repaeadai,  17. 

Rousseau,  77. 

Termination,  27. 

Teutonic  languages,  36. 

Sanskrit,  23,  25,  26,  39,  40-43,  67-72, 
78,  86. 

Thales,  82. 
Theodoric,  60. 

Sayce,  65. 

Thinking  aloud,  85. 

Selfishness,  105. 

Thirsty,  17. 

Thought,  defined,  96  et  seq.;  identity 

Sepoys,  and  the  English,  51. 

of  language  and,  73  et  seq.  ;  Science 

Seven  Rivers,  the  land  of,  57. 
Scancia,  60  et  seq. 

of,  its   corrective  influences,   106; 
thicker  than  blood,  43  et  seq. 

Scandinavia,  57  et  seq. 

Thuggee,  41. 

Schelling,  75. 

Tiefstufe,  70. 

Scherer,  71. 

Tiger,  63. 

Schleiermacher,  75. 

Timbre,  84. 

Science  of  Language,  The,  cited,  88,  94. 
Science  of  Thought,  The,  cited,  26,  73, 

Times,  The,  68. 
Tongues,  confusion  of,  102. 

75,  76,  90,  94,  96,  97- 

Torrere,  17. 

Scientific  terms,  19. 

Tree,  63,  88,  89,  92,  98. 

Shinar,  102. 

Turanian,  43  et  seq. 

Shakespeare,  words  in,  n,  16. 

Simplicity,  14. 

Udatta,  70. 

Skeat,  ii,  26,  71. 

Uinen,  59. 

Skin,  as  a  criterion  of  race,  47,  52. 

Ujfalvy,  64. 

Skull,  as  a  criterion  of  race,  47,  53. 

Ullage,  18. 

Slang,  10,  16,  17. 

Undines,  84. 

Slaves,  53. 

Unselfishness,  105. 

Slavonic  languages,  36. 

Utilitarianism,  104. 

Slide,  slang  word,  16. 

Snow,  62. 

Vedic,  age,  religion,  etc.,  57  et  seq.-, 

Spenser,  14. 

language,  70. 

St8,  30. 

Villain,  13. 

SCIENCE  OF  LANGUAGE. 


Vincent,  Bory  de  St.,  46. 
Virgil,  37- 
Volgare,  II,  18. 
Vowels,  69  et  seq. 

Welcker,  38. 
Welsh,  55, 
Wear,  28. 
Whately,  75. 
Winter,  62. 

Words,  number  of,  used  in  commor 
life,  in    Shakespeare,    the    Bible 


etc.,io-u;  the  adventures  of,  19, 
63  ;  their  analysis  into  roots,  25  et 
seq.;  their  importance,  97  et  seq.; 
philosophers  must  look  to  their, 
106. 
World,  28. 

Yavan,  or  Yauna,  58, 
Yaxartes,  56,  65. 
Yo  heo,  30. 

Zeuss,  68. 


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